6 Glendesha Road, Mullaghbawn, Newry, Co. Armagh, BT35 9XN

Former Belmont Barracks, now a private house, built in 1795 by the Commissioners of the Barracks, possibly replacing an earlier structure on the same site dating from 1689. The building is one of a pair of semi-detached dwellings, originally constructed as a yeomanry barracks in the townland of Shanroe. After 1821 it was converted into a dwelling for a doctor, with a dispensary providing free medical treatment housed in an outbuilding to the adjoining house. In 1891 it was sold to the Catholic Church and became the parochial house for St Mary's, Mullaghbawn. The building remained in church ownership until December 1984, when both semi-detached houses were sold as private domestic dwellings.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The barracks was built in the aftermath of disturbances following the Berkley outrage of 1791, in which a schoolmaster and his wife were maimed — the wife subsequently dying of her wounds — by members of an agrarian secret society called the Defenders. Musgrave's Memoirs of the 1798 rebellion record that there was an earlier barracks at Forkhill, built in 1689 "to repress the ferocious spirit of the raparees" and surviving until around 1755, though little supporting evidence for this survives. Some intriguing structures are shown on Rocque's 1760 map of County Armagh to the north of the Croslieve mountains which may represent the barracks towers.

Immediately following the Berkley outrage, trustees for the recently deceased landlord Richard Jackson wrote to the Bishop of Dromore proposing that a barracks be built at Forkhill for a company of foot. The site, located near the dwelling where Alexander Berkley had been attacked, was formally purchased in 1795 by the Commissioners of the Barracks from Jackson's trustees for the sum of £291 12s 11d. The barracks was known variously as Belmont Barracks, Mountain Barracks, Forkhill Barracks and Shanroe Barracks. A local force, the Forkhill Yeomanry, later the Upper Orier Yeomanry, was formed under Colonel Ogle shortly after the barracks opened. Ogle's mother-in-law, and Richard Jackson's sister, Susanna Barton — a trustee of Richard Jackson's estate — is said to have provided the necessary funds to establish the barracks, a gesture publicly praised by parish inhabitants.

During the United Irish rebellion there is evidence of activity at Belmont Barracks. Colonel Ogle wrote from Belmont in March 1797 to an aide-de-camp to General Lake reporting that a local informer knew of pikes hidden in caves at Cave Hill, Belfast. A company of the North Britons Fencibles was stationed at the barracks in June 1798 and was engaged in pursuing rebel forces on Slieve Gullion. A local ballad evokes this period: "Though the Scotch Horse were in Belmont, and Roden's riders too, We forged good steel in Quilly, beside the old Creg-Dubh." The North Britons were subsequently assisted by a company of the Sutherland Fencibles, who marched from Belfast to Dundalk that same month. Writing in 1937, L P Murray noted that the building retained "many marks and evidences of its original use" and that only a few years before a "Whipping Tower, with its gruesome appliances" had been removed from a position at the right corner of the entrance. By local tradition, a lane at the rear of the barracks was known as Whipping Lane. A traditional ballad entitled "The Carrive Blacksmith" commemorates Thomas Lappin, a blacksmith and United Irishman who was arrested for making pikestaffs and flogged over a number of days at Belmont, nonetheless refusing to divulge the names of his associates.

The building is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1835, captioned "Old Barrack", with four roughly square-on-plan structures marking the corners of an inner enclosing wall surrounded by a three-sided outer wall. A newspaper article of 1912 refers to the "towers of Belmont — occupied in the Penal days by the soldiery and associated with many a cruel and terrible deed", indicating that the barracks was once characterised by these tall structures and that they continued to occupy a vivid place in folk memory a century later.

When the barracks became obsolete it was sold to the Reverend James Campbell, Rector of Forkhill, for £70 in 1821, apparently for the specific purpose of establishing a dispensary for the Forkhill district, with funds provided by Richard Jackson's trust. The former barracks was converted into two dwellings: the present house was occupied by a doctor and one of the outbuildings was used as a dispensary where the poor could obtain free medicines and medical treatment. The Townland Valuation of the 1830s records the current dwelling as being occupied by Samuel Walker (1815/16–1845), the medical attendant for Forkhill Dispensary, while the adjacent house was the residence of the Reverend James Smith, curate of Forkhill parish. The house was valued at £7 10s. Dimensions recorded at this time suggest that the right-hand bay was single storey at this period and that there was a narrow projection at the rear. There was also a single-storey byre and a two-storey outbuilding used as a stable, which may correspond to one of the still-extant former barracks towers. The dwelling was described as stone and slated, while the outbuildings, though not new, were in good repair.

Walker was elected to the post at Forkhill by Richard Jackson's trustees in 1825 shortly after his graduation. He was a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin and had also been educated in midwifery at the lying-in hospital there. A government report of 1835 describes the dispensary as "a neat small building, two storeys high, each storey containing one room; the lower room appropriated as a waiting room, the upper room used as the dispensary shop" — an arrangement strongly suggestive of one of the former barracks towers. Walker was paid £50 per annum by the trustees and had his house rent free. He attended patients at the dispensary on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays between 11am and 3pm, though acute cases could be seen at any time. As well as medicines, the medical attendant provided leeches, attended all difficult births and gave vaccinations. Patients could not be accommodated at the dispensary but the doctor occasionally took them into his own house at his own expense. In the year 1834–35, 1,474 sick poor were treated at Forkhill Dispensary.

Walker later left to take a post as medical officer to Londonderry city and surgeon to the port. Henry Stanley (1820–88), trained at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin and at Glasgow University, was subsequently appointed as medical attendant at Forkhill Dispensary for the period 1844 to 1853. Stanley ran the dispensary through the years of the Great Famine and some records of the illnesses treated during this period survive. In May 1847, at the height of the famine, Stanley reported to the trustees that "you will find the great amount of disease to be dysentery, fever and cold" — largely diseases associated with starvation. He treated 112 patients with dysentery, 83 with bronchitis and 38 with fever in that quarter alone, 292 patients in total, and made 120 home visits in the quarter to April 1846.

The Reverend Campbell died in 1858 and the property passed ultimately to his nephew Peter Quinn of the Agency, Newry. The houses are shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1862, captioned "Belmount" and "Forkhill Dispensary", the latter caption appearing to indicate the north-east tower as the location of the dispensary. Griffith's Valuation of 1862 lists the houses as owned by Peter Quinn and occupied by John and Waddell McBride, valued at £9 10s and £10 respectively. John McBride (died c.1904), son of Waddell McBride, farmer, had studied medicine at Glasgow University, graduating in 1855, and subsequently became medical officer to Forkhill Dispensary District and constabulary. At this period the right-hand bay of the present house remained single storey.

In 1891 the building was sold to the Catholic Church for £300 and became the parochial house for St Mary's, Mullaghbawn. The parish priest lived in the current dwelling and the curate in the neighbouring house. The first occupants in the 1890s were the Reverend John Markey (who purchased the barracks for the parish and was parish priest from 1888 to 1895), the Reverend John Carraher and the Reverend Peter McCartney (parish priest from 1895 to 1909). The valuation of the house was raised from £9 10s to £11 in 1893, corresponding with the probable construction date of a bathroom outbuilding at the rear, which is first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1906–7. Porches to the front elevations of both houses are also first shown on that map; these were originally flat-roofed and were re-roofed after 2015. The valuation was reduced to £8 in 1901.

The 1901 census records Peter McCartney, parish priest and a native of County Louth, living in the current dwelling with two servants. Both houses had six rooms each and were designated second class, with thirteen outbuildings between them ranging from stables to a potato house. By 1911 the house was occupied by the Reverend Eugene Clarke (parish priest from 1909 to 1946), an Irish and English speaker from County Louth, who lived with his housekeeper and a boarder. By 1911 the house had been extended to nine rooms and re-designated first class, though this increase in accommodation is not reflected in valuation records.

At the time of the general revaluation in 1933, the house was described as "in fairly good repair". The accommodation comprised two sitting rooms, a kitchen, pantry and dairy on the ground floor and three bedrooms on the first floor, with a bathroom having hot and cold water, a separate WC and a separate wash basin said to have been added by the Reverend Clarke, though the bathroom outbuilding pre-dates his tenure. There was also a private oratory or small chapel on the upper floor. Subsequent occupiers of the priest's house were the Reverend James Corry (1936), the Reverend John O'Neill (parish priest 1946–58), the Reverend Brian Maginnis (parish priest 1958–71) and the Reverend P V Cooney (parish priest from 1971).

A prominent feature of the present dwelling — the wallhead dormer windows — is also found at another building known to be a former 18th-century barracks, Johnston's Fews in Camly townland, and may indicate higher-status rooms within the original barracks building, contrasting as they do with the plain windows of the neighbouring block.

EXTERIOR

The building is a two-storey, three-bay semi-detached former barracks with half-dormers, attached to the neighbouring house to the north-east. It has a rectangular plan with a single-storey, single-bay entrance porch to the north-west with a hipped roof, and single-storey and two-storey extensions to the rear.

The roof is pitched, covered in fibre cement slates with ridge tiles. There are three red brick chimneystacks with profiled brick cornices, lead flashing and terracotta chimney pots. Rainwater goods are uPVC and aluminium. The walls are painted roughcast render with a smooth rendered eaves course, plinth and narrow margin corners.

The principal elevation faces north-west and is asymmetrical, with square-headed openings having granite cills and smooth raised margins. At first-floor level there are gabled wallhead dormer windows with moulded timber bargeboards surmounted by terracotta finials. Windows throughout are replacement uPVC casements, with a replacement fixed margin-paned window to the porch. The entrance door, positioned to the north-east of the porch, is a timber panelled door.

The south-west elevation forms a gable with a single square-headed window opening at ground-floor level, fitted with a replacement uPVC casement window.

The rear elevation faces south-east and has two half-dormers. Windows are generally replacement uPVC. The rear extension spans three bays: the left and right bays are single-storey lean-to structures, with a two-storey pitched-roof central bay. There is a replacement uPVC entrance door to the left cheek of the extension. Larger windows to the extension are replacement uPVC; smaller windows are timber fixed pane. A semi-circular headed window to the left cheek of the upper floor of the extension has a margin-paned timber sliding sash and a smooth panelled tympanum.

OUTBUILDING

The garden contains a free-standing, square-on-plan, hipped-roof former bathroom built around 1900, formerly connected by a timber and corrugated iron walkway — now removed — to the upper floor of the main building. It has a natural slate roof, replacement metal rainwater goods and a cast iron soil pipe. The walls are painted redbrick. Windows are timber sliding sashes. Doors are replacement panelled timber with a plain glass transom light over the entrance door to the east. The interior has exposed brick walls and a timber-sheeted ceiling. It is currently used for storage.

BARRACKS TOWERS AND BOUNDARY WALLS

The barracks accommodation building was formerly enclosed by an inner boundary wall with four two-storey corner towers. Adjacent to the roadside, the uncoursed rubblestone boundary wall survives as a retaining wall, extending from the north-eastern elevation of the surviving tower. The north-western corner tower survives in a complete condition, while there are extant remains of the north-eastern and south-eastern towers. Several further sections of the inner uncoursed rubblestone barracks wall survive as boundary walls to the gardens of the neighbouring properties.

The surviving north-western corner tower is a two-storey, square-on-plan structure with a hipped roof of fibre cement slates, black fibre cement ridge tiles and a redbrick chimneystack to the north. The walls are limewashed random rubblestone with a projecting granite eaves course supporting uPVC rainwater goods. Doors and windows have timber lintels; windows have granite cills. Doors are timber tongue and groove. The main elevation faces south-east with four stone steps leading to a door at upper level, with a replacement metal handrail and original wrought iron door furniture. A wall abuts the south-eastern elevation with a rectangular-headed archway having a replacement steel lintel, opening onto stone steps leading down to a door at ground-floor level, with a 6-over-6 timber sliding sash window above. The west elevation has a replacement top-hung four-paned timber window at ground-floor level. A wrought iron gate gives access to the adjacent road. The north elevation, facing the road, is blank. On the east elevation, where the boundary wall abuts the building, there is a replacement top-hung four-paned timber window at ground-floor level with a redbrick relieving arch above.

A rendered boundary party wall extends from the south-east rear elevation into the gardens, dividing this property from the neighbouring house.

SETTING

The building is set back from and parallel with the road with a gravel driveway approach from the east. The attached house lies to the north-east, a mature hedgerow to the north-west, and mature gardens to the south-east with boundary walls and the surviving tower structure associated with the former barracks forming the immediate setting. Concrete paths and a rendered retaining wall with concrete coping give access to the gardens beyond. The site is located at the foot of the Slievebrack and Croslieve mountains with extensive views northward across the surrounding countryside within the Ring of Gullion.

ALTERATIONS

A number of alterations have been made to the building over time. These include the addition of a front porch around 1900, to which a hipped roof has recently been added; the replacement of windows with uPVC; the replacement of the roof covering and rainwater goods; an extension to the east; and the laying of a paved area to the front. These alterations have detracted from the integrity of the original barracks building.