Rathturret, Rath Road, Warrenpoint, Newry, Co Down, BT34 3RX

Rathturret is a Gothic Revival house with tower, built in 1883, set in mature landscaped grounds on the west side of Rath Road, Warrenpoint. It is a two-storey, three-bay, double-pile late 19th-century house constructed throughout in polychrome brickwork. The building is split-level, with the front rooms of the forward pile sitting lower than the rear rooms of the back pile. The principal garden-facing elevation looks south, while the main entrance is on the north-facing rear elevation.

The roofs are pitched and finished in artificial slate with terracotta ridges and exposed moulded rafter tails. The tall chimneys are in a Tudor Revival style, grouped together in red brick with ornately corbelled copings and purple brick stringcourses. Rainwater goods are half-round metal. The walls are red brick with a chamfered advanced base course and several stringcourses of blue engineering bricks at each floor level. All windows are 1-over-1 sashes with stop-end chamfered reveals and Gothic heads inset with sandstone tympanums, some of which contain circular blind recesses. Cills are moulded granite.

The north elevation — the entrance front — is in two bays. The left bay is one-and-a-half storeys high and advances slightly. Its ground floor has four equally spaced windows and its upper floor has two large wall-head dormers, each with a pitched artificial slated roof, crested ridge, and decorative timber bargeboard inset with fretted Gothic motifs. Each dormer contains a pair of windows with common cills. The right bay is two storeys high and divided into three distinct parts. The left part has a wall-head dormer with a similar roof but different timber bargeboards, and two windows to each floor, with the first-floor windows diminished in height. The middle section is narrower, with three very narrow windows to each floor; those at ground floor are very tall and have a fixed transom over each, while the first-floor ones are diminished in height. The lintels of the lower windows serve as the cills of the upper ones, and the upper windows have flat granite heads. The right part of this bay is abutted on its right by the tower.

The tower rises in three stages, the third stage standing clear of the main house and topped with a very steeply pitched square roof clad in clay tiles, swept at the bottom. Each of the four pitches has a tiny glazed lucarne with a cusped window. The tower has a small leaded flat top with elaborate wrought-iron cresting. All faces of each stage are treated identically except for the left cheek of the first stage, which contains the main entrance. Here a chamfered Gothic doorway holds a pair of varnished timber front doors, each with five panels: the bottom panel square, the top two tapering to follow the pointed head, all raised and fielded and decoratively chamfered, with brass door furniture. Immediately above the doorcase is a Gothic-headed sandstone panel carved with a family crest and the motto HONORE ET AMORE, with A.D. 1883 in raised letters below. The remaining faces of the first stage each have a pair of narrow 1-over-1 sashes. The front, left, and right cheeks of the second stage each have three similar windows and a moulded sandstone stringcourse at window-head level. Each face of the third stage has four similar windows above a dentilled and corbelled brick eaves course.

The west elevation of the main house is two bays wide — one per pile — with the right cheek of the tower at its left side. Both bays have wall-head dormers, with the right bay advancing slightly and its windows set noticeably lower than those to the left bay owing to the split-level arrangement. The left bay has a glazed timber door at basement level with a small 1-over-1 sash to its left. At ground floor there are three narrow windows stepping down from left to right, and two similar windows at low level to the right. At first floor are two windows within a dormer set to the left, a tiny 1-over-1 sash to their left, and a pair of taller 1-over-1 sashes at a lower level to the right of the bay. The right bay has a moulded sandstone platband between ground and first floors and two large windows to each floor.

The south elevation — the garden front — has three bays and a moulded sandstone platband between ground and first floors, with a four-stack chimney rising between the central and right bays. The left bay has a two-storey canted bay window with a steeply pitched canted roof; each cheek contains a 1-over-1 sash, with each set sharing common chamfered granite cills and heads. The central bay has three openings at ground floor: windows to left and right, with a steel door and fixed transom over in the centre, all with chamfered granite lintels; the first floor has a pair of windows in a small wall-head gable. The right bay has two windows to each floor, those to the first floor also under a wall-head gable matching those elsewhere.

The east elevation has two bays, each under a gable with decorated bargeboards, the right one advancing. The left gable is blank-walled, with a moulded sandstone platband between floors and blue engineering brick embellishment. The right pitch of the left bay catslides down at a different pitch and is abutted by a modern single-storey kitchen extension. The exposed south cheek of the main gable at first-floor level has a gabled dormer with a glazed door leading out onto the roof. The extension walls are finished to match the main house; its flat roof forms a patio enclosed by a brick parapet with plain metal railings. It has a 1-over-1 sash into the basement on its left and four 1-over-1 sash windows with granite lintels on its south wall. The east elevation of the extension is blank except for a glazed timber door at the left end. The narrow north-facing cheek of the extension has a single 1-over-1 window in an opening that is an exact copy of those found elsewhere on this elevation.

To the east of the house is a small domestic yard containing a garage and shed, enclosed to the north by a brick wall with a tongue-and-groove sheeted door to the centre and a pair of tongue-and-groove sheeted sliding garage doors at the left end under a brick gable.

Internally the house remains little altered and retains its manually operated dumb-waiter.

The setting to the north is a short driveway from Rath Road planted with mature trees. Immediately to the northwest of the house stands a substantial 1970s timber chalet with a shallow roof and timber-clad walls. To the southwest, south, and southeast are mature terraced gardens planted with mature trees and shrubs. To the south is a modern open-air swimming pool. At the southeast corner, on the boundary with Rath Road, there is a disused entrance with tongue-and-groove sheeted gates.

Construction began in 1883 under W.S. Richards, who also built the nearby threshing mill in the same year. The house is first recorded — under the name of Henry Richards — in the 1886 Valuation revision book. W.S. Richards was one of three bachelor sons of the Reverend Richards of the adjacent Clonallan Rectory. According to local tradition, on their father's death in 1883 the brothers were required to vacate the rectory and purchased this neighbouring site on which to build their new home. The date and builder's name are confirmed by the datestone on the house itself, by the Valuation revision book held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (VAL 12B/22/23D, p.74), and by information provided by the owner in 1999.