Annvale House, 66 Upper Damolly Road, Newry, Co Down, BT34 1QW

Annvale House

This two-storey house with attic and three-bay symmetrical front has been demolished. It stood on the west side of Upper Damolly Road, Newry, facing south.

The building represented a naive adaptation of classical architecture applied to an essentially vernacular structure, drawing on pattern book designs. It survived in virtually original condition, retaining most of its historic fabric, and was a notable example of vernacular styling copying formal architectural conventions.

The hipped roof was finished with natural slates, leaded hips and ridges, and overhanging eaves with timber fascia. Cast-iron skylights sat at each end of the hips. Chimneys flanked the central bay, lined, rendered and coped. Semicircular metal gutters ran around the eaves. All walls were lined render with V-channelled stucco quoins, and all window openings had painted granite cills.

At ground floor centre was a one-storey porch with pitched natural slate roof and decorative bargeboards. The door on the right cheek was four-panelled grained timber with bolection mouldings. The porch gable contained a 1/1 sliding sash window. Identical 1/1 windows lit the end bays of the main block, with three more at first floor aligned with the openings below. The left and right elevations each had a single 6/6 sliding sash window on each floor. The rear wall was dashed and painted.

A two-storey return abutted the central bay and a single-storey return abutted the right bay. The two-storey return had a flat roof meeting the main house just below eaves level, with painted and rendered walls. Its first-floor right cheek had a small 1/1 sliding sash window. The left cheek held a two-paned metal casement window with painted cement cill, a 1/1 sliding sash window, and above at centre a 6/6 sliding sash window.

The single-storey return had a hipped natural slate roof with a tall rendered chimney rising from the ridge centre, the roof descending to a valley at the central return and forming a catslide over the porch. Its walls were dashed except the right cheek, which was line rendered. The right cheek contained a pair of unequal 2/2 sliding sashes to the left side and a large metal casement window with painted concrete cill to the right of centre, with a tongued-and-grooved sheeted door beyond. A small porch occupied the angle between the returns, with a tongued-and-grooved sheeted door and three-paned mouth-organ transom in its left cheek, and a 1/1 sliding sash window on the exposed face. The remaining exposed section of the second return's left cheek had a single 2/2 sliding sash window.

The front garden was reduced in size to facilitate site access, resulting in removal of railings and relocation of their chamfered granite base wall closer to the house. To the rear lay a small enclosed garden with high profiled metal fence. An area formerly used as an orchard was enclosed by a random rubble wall. To the left of the house was a small yard containing outhouses of no architectural interest.

The building first appeared on the 1858 Ordnance Survey map as "Anneville House", indicating construction between 1834 and 1858. It was demolished sometime after the Second Survey visit, post-1998.