Water attendants house, 25 Ballybannon Road, Castlewellan, Ballybannon Townland, Dundrum

Water Attendants House, 25 Ballybannon Road, Castlewellan

This is one of six identical linesmen's houses erected along the Mourne conduit, forming part of the Mourne Scheme by which the Belfast City & District Water Commissioners brought water to Belfast from the Annalong and Kilkeel rivers. The building is of undoubted historical interest as part of the infrastructure associated with Belfast's first water supply from the Mournes.

The dwelling is a one and a half storey, two-bay water pipe attendant's house of rectangular plan, orientated east-west with its gable facing Ballybannon Road. It was constructed in the distinctive and attractive style of the Belfast City & District Water Commissioners, with careful execution and good use of contrasting yellow brick in its embellishment.

The pitched natural slate roof has plain painted wooden bargeboards, moulded concrete kneeler stones, and ogee cast-iron gutters. A distinctive red brick chimney occupies the centre of the ridge, with yellow brick stepped quoins and cap. The walls are constructed of squared rubble Silurian stone in irregular courses over a projecting basal course. Yellow brick is used in the projecting eaves, stepped quoins, and along the top of the base course. Windows and doors are trimmed with yellow brick heads and jambs with stepped details and stop-end chamfers.

All window openings have shallow segmental heads and chamfered painted cills, probably of concrete. The windows themselves are 2/2 timber-framed sliding sashes. The main facade faces north. At the left is a one-storey porch with pitched natural slate roof and raised yellow brick verges and concrete kneelers. Three granite steps lead up to a painted tongue-and-groove boarded door in the left cheek, with a window in the north-facing gable wall of the porch and a blank right cheek. To the right of the porch on the main block wall is a single window opening. The wall continues east to enclose a yard. The east gable has two window openings to the ground floor and two to the attic floor in line with those below. The south wall is blank save for a single 1/1 top-hung replacement window in an original opening to a back room at ground floor left. The west gable is abutted on the left by a single-storey monopitched return along the inside of the yard's north wall. Above this is a window to a half landing, and above and to the right is a similar window to a back bedroom.

The yard projects south and west of the dwelling, with the entrance on the east wall. The yard wall is of similar construction to the dwelling with yellow-brick trim and is coped with rock-faced blocks. The original wide entrance has been sheeted over with a wicket gate inserted. Square masonry gate pillars flank the original opening, each with yellow brick quoins and projecting flat concrete caps. The house was internally connected to the one-storey return, from which access to the yard was obtained, as confirmed by similar attendants' houses elsewhere on the conduit.

South of the house is a pipe inspection chamber with walls and flat roof of reinforced concrete and metal access lids on top. The chamber contains a cross connection pipe and control valves between three siphon pipes running between the Tullybranigan well house and Shaw's Well. A pair of red-painted wrought-iron gates to the road are hung from cast-iron posts with ball heads embossed with the initials 'BWC' (Belfast Water Commissioners).

The plans were drawn up by L.L. Macassey, Engineer to the Belfast City & District Water Commissioners, and approved by the Board in February 1899. The contract (No. 16, valued at £6,806) for erecting all six houses was awarded to Messrs Courtney & Co in November of the same year. By April 1901, all were nearing completion and were presumably occupied by the time the pipeline was officially opened in October 1901. The house is cited as a caretaker's house in the 1902 valuation.

Although now in private ownership, the house continues to be used for its original purpose. The other five identical houses in the series are located at Tullybranigan, Drumanaquoile, Dunmore, Ballykine, and Creevytenant. More substantial water-related dwellings were also erected at Silent Valley, Dunnywater, and Knockbreckan.