Rockville, 68 Rocks Chapel Road, Lisnamore, Crossgar, Co Down, BT30 9HN

Rockville is a long, plain two-storey gabled house of possible 18th-century construction, situated on the south side of Rocks Chapel Road roughly a mile south of Crossgar. The building presents an unusual relationship to the road: although it sits directly on the roadside, its principal façade faces away from the road in a roughly southern direction. This awkward positioning results from a realignment of the road that took place sometime before 1834, when the road originally ran to the south of the property.

The house is recorded on the Ordnance Survey map of 1834 and appears in the Kilmore parish valuation records of 1835. The valuers noted it as reasonably old, perhaps 30 to 50 years at that date, yet in good condition, suggesting possible recent renovation that would account for its general late Georgian internal detailing. This assessment, combined with the discovery by the present owner of the date '1751' inscribed on an internal wall during renovation work, supports a hypothesis of 18th-century construction, though the exact storey arrangement at that date remains uncertain. The property was originally built with shorter, partly single-storey wings to the east and west; these were heightened to the level of the main section around 1970, giving the house its present extended appearance.

The south-facing principal façade is generally symmetrical. At ground floor level, the centre contains a panelled and glazed door with thick jambs and a segmental fanlight. To the left are three relatively small sash windows with vertical glazing bars, with a modern single-storey flat-roofed bay at the far left. To the right of the doorway are three similar sash windows, a modern glazed door, and an enlarged window at the far right. The first floor displays six sash windows with Georgian panes. The sections that were raised around 1970 occupy the far left and far right, flanking the chimney stacks; the western section was raised approximately 3 feet, while the eastern section was heightened by roughly 7 to 8 feet. Both heightened sections feature large picture windows, with an adjoining modern door to the left. The west gable has a large modern window on each floor. A small single-storey gabled section is attached to the east gable.

The rear façade, facing onto the road and easily mistaken for the front, is also symmetrical. At ground floor level, the centre has a panelled timber door with segmental fanlight featuring 'spider's web' tracery. To the left and right are two widely spaced sash windows, with five similar windows on the first floor. To the east is the single-storey section attached to the east gable, which has a panelled door with segmental fanlight and two segmental 'eyebrow'-like windows to the left; this façade was remodelled recently by the owner. The east gable of the single-storey section is set on the squint, with a short return section added to the south. The façade is finished in dry dash. The gabled roof is covered in natural slate with four brick chimney stacks and cast iron rainwater goods.

To the immediate east of the property is a laneway flanked by tall square gate pillars in random rubble, each topped with a pyramidal cap. The laneway was widened recently and the east pillar has been shifted slightly further east. To the west of the west pillar is a short section of high rubble walling with a segmental arched pedestrian gate fitted with simple wrought iron ironwork. Directly across the road to the north is another high rubble wall with vehicle and pedestrian gates of similar style. Behind this wall stands a collection of rubble-built outbuildings, two and single storey, now disused. One outbuilding to the northwest flanks the roadside and has lost much of its roof. To its east lies another outbuilding set with its gable facing the vehicle gateway; its south gable features a large elliptical archway with a timber-sheeted loft door above.

To the front of the house, beyond the garden, is a gravel drive. Beyond this lies a small field bordered by a rubble wall, relatively high in places. This field was once used as a bleach green, connected to a pre-1835 bleach mill that formerly stood to the southwest.

In 1835, Rockville was owned by Daniel Bell and Thomas Henry, both of whom also owned a flour mill a short distance to the southwest, now completely ruinous and overgrown. The Ordnance Survey memoirs of 1836 record this mill as having a breast wheel 17 feet in diameter with 'almost always a sufficiency of water'. Adjacent to the mill stood a bleach mill with bleachers' houses, which were disused and ruined by 1835. According to E.R.R. Green's 'Industrial Archaeology of County Down', a brass seal was formerly preserved at Rockville, inscribed 'Sl McAllister / Kilmor / Bleacher', suggesting that this McAllister may have resided at the property sometime prior to the 1830s, though the date of the seal and its current whereabouts are unknown. By 1863, Rockville was in the hands of James Wright. The house remained substantially unchanged in its pre-1834 form until around 1970, when the present owner raised the shorter single wings to east and west to the level of the main section.