241 Newry Road, Kilkeel, Newry, Co Down, BT34 4SB

241 Newry Road, Kilkeel

A substantial two-storey Mourne farmhouse of early 19th-century date, retaining many original features with a regularised but asymmetrical façade and fine decorative porch.

The main house is a two-storey, two-bay formalised vernacular farmhouse with one and two-storey returns. It has a pitched natural slate roof with rendered gable chimneys without pots. The ridge is finished in blue clay tiles, the verges are raised in concrete, and the eaves project. Gutters are galvanised metal with some plastic sections on the single-storey outhouses. The walls are whitewashed lime rendered.

The principal elevation faces north-east. Slightly left of centre is the entrance door, framed and sheeted with a two-paned overlight, all protected within a decorative pitched-roofed timber-framed open porch. The front panels of the porch are pierced with designs including leaves, hearts and stars, whilst the flanks are finished with diagonal trelliswork. To the left and right are 6/6 sliding sash windows with exposed boxes and painted granite cills. At first floor are three 6/3 sliding sashes aligned with the ground floor openings, also with exposed boxes and granite cills.

The left gable is abutted by a single-storey, two-bay outhouse (possibly former labourers' lodgings) with a pitched natural slate roof, chimney to the party wall, rendered walls, and no rainwater goods. The exposed section of this gable is blank. The north elevation is blank. The east gable has a small window. The south elevation features a tongued and grooved door into the left bay.

The rear elevation of the main block is abutted across its entire length: at the left by a one-and-a-half storey return and at the right by a one-storey lean-to. The left return was, according to the owner, formerly a shop. It was built in two phases, reflected in a 30-centimetre instep between ground and upper floors. It has a pitched natural slate roof and whitewashed rendered walls. On its east elevation is a sheeted door and a 1/1 sliding sash to the right, with a loading door to the first floor. In the gable is a sheeted loft door accessed by external mass-concrete stairs. The left cheek of this return has casement windows at each floor level. The lean-to on the right of the rear elevation has a monopitch artificial slate roof with a sheeted door on the yard-facing wall and a modern steel casement window to its right. Both cheeks are blank. The right gable of the main block is blank. A water pump stands against the outside wall of the lean-to.

At the front of the house is a formally laid out geometrical garden protected by a low whitewashed stone wall with a traditional wrought iron gate. The approach is by a long drive past the west gable to a stone-paved, walled yard with traditional vernacular pattern gates. Behind the house is a parallel range of single-storey buildings, now roofless.

Historical Sources

The building appears on the 1834 Ordnance Survey 6-inch map. The 1838 Valuation records the owner as Edward Cummin with dimensions of 33 feet 6 inches by 19 feet by 15 feet, which broadly accord with the 1861 Valuation and match the present house. The listing extent includes the house, garden walling and gate.