130 Castlewellan Road, Cabra, Rathfriland, Newry, Co Down, BT34 5RA

130 Castlewellan Road, Cabra, Rathfriland, Newry, Co Down

A two-storey, three-bay mid-19th-century house with attached outbuilding, set back from the north side of Castlewellan Road immediately east of St Mary's Roman Catholic Church.

Main House

The house has a pitched natural slate roof with clay ridges and dressed granite skews. A punched ashlar granite chimney with overhanging coping rises from each gable. Semicircular cast iron rainwater goods are fitted to plain corbelled eaves.

The walls are lined and painted lime render. The south-facing front elevation contains four openings on each floor. The ground floor left bay accommodates a shop unit, served by a pair of narrow tongue-and-groove sheeted storm doors with a plainly glazed transom. Adjacent to these is a rectangular fixed window with 16-paned (4x4) Georgian glazing, having a dressed granite cill and wrought iron security bars. The middle bay features a four-panelled painted timber 19th-century door in poor condition, with raised and fielded bolection-moulded panels, a decorative iron knob and knocker, and decoratively chamfered timber moulding between it and a plain transom above. The right bay at ground floor contains an 8/8 sliding sash window, matching the shop window in all details. Four first-floor windows occupy positions in line with the ground floor openings but reduced in height; all are 2/1 horizontally divided sliding sashes in advanced decay, and likely originally had 8/4 panes. The left gable is blank.

The rear elevation is lime harled and whitewashed. At ground floor, the left bay contains an 8/8 sliding sash window with security bars and cill matching the façade. The central bay has a small tongue-and-groove sheeted door at left and a small 6/3 sliding sash window with horns and security bars. The right bay has an 8/8 sash window with security bars serving the shop. Three first-floor windows are present: those to left and right bays are 8/4 sashes without horns and painted granite cills; the window to the middle bay, aligned with the 6/3 opening below, is an 8/8 sliding sash with a lower cill level to accommodate the larger bottom sash. The right gable is blank.

Outbuilding

The two-storey outbuilding, aligned north-south, abuts the northeast corner of the house and partially encloses the rear yard. It has a pitched natural slate roof with skews matching the main house; the slates are exceptionally large, each approximately 60 centimetres by 90 centimetres. The walls are granite rubble rendered in lime.

The main elevation, facing west into the yard, has a doorway at the left ground floor; to its right are two vertical wall vents. Beyond these are a pair of steel casements (likely post-War), set in a short granite cill above a possibly widened earlier opening. A three-quarter-height door stands to the right, followed at the end by a wide doorway with a low semi-elliptical head and hinge bolts to its reveals. Three first-floor openings are present: a window with exposed frame and granite cill to the left; a tongue-and-groove sheeted loading door with broad boards and granite cill to the left of centre, positioned above the steel casement; and a second sheeted loading door at the far right.

The north gable is blank and abutted with earth to approximately one metre above ground in the yard. The rear wall is similarly embanked to approximately 1.5 metres, with two ground-level vents serving the ground floor and, at first floor to the right of centre, a loading door with earth built up to it in a rough ramp. To the left of this door is a square vent with a collapsed head.

Yard and Boundary

The rear yard is enclosed to west and north by a rubble granite wall. At the junction with the house on the west wall stand a pair of dressed granite gate piers with octagonal granite caps, supporting a pair of flat iron gates with dog bars and decorative heads. Within the yard are a cast iron pump (cap missing) and two derelict lean-to sheds. On the northwest corner of the yard boundary at the lane stands a traditional circular gatepost, its twin and the associated gates having been removed.