27 Whitehill Road, Banbridge, County Down, BT31 9TJ

A symmetrical detached three-bay two-storey rubblestone house built around 1830, set on the north side of Whitehill Road facing south. The building stands within its own small site enclosed by a rubblestone wall, with a wrought-iron gate on rendered piers to the southeast and a diminutive single-storey whitewashed rubblestone structure beside the gatescreen, added between 1860 and 1901–2.

The house is rectangular on plan with a pitched natural slate roof fitted with black clay ridge tiles and profiled redbrick chimneystacks rising from either gable, topped with terracotta pots. Cement parged verges are set above a redbrick eaves course. Random rubblestone walls are laid in lime mortar with rough hewn quoins. The three-bay front elevation features square-headed window openings with cut stone lintels and sills, redbrick reveals, and replacement two-over-two timber sash windows. The central entrance has a square-headed opening with cut stone lintel, redbrick reveals, a replacement vertically-sheeted timber door and replacement threshold stone. The rear elevation mirrors the front in detail, except the central first-floor window is single-pane with coloured margin lights. Both east and west gables are blank, each with a flush redbrick flue rising to the chimneystack. Replacement cast-iron guttering on iron drive-through brackets and cast-iron downpipes are fitted throughout.

The current structure is fundamentally a 1930s remodelling of an earlier single-storey vernacular dwelling. A building appeared on this site on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833–4, recorded as rectangular on plan with outbuildings to the north and east, none of which survive. The house was not listed in the Townland Valuation of 1828–40, falling below the £3 threshold for inclusion. Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 valued the earlier dwelling at £1, indicating it was originally a modest single-storey vernacular structure. The occupier was James Caul, a tenant farmer leasing the house from Earl Annesley, working a farm of over 12 acres. In 1888 the farm passed to Edward Caul, who is recorded in the 1901 census as a 60-year-old farmer resident with his brother, two sisters and an 8-year-old nephew. By 1911 two further siblings had joined the household, and the house was then categorised as a thatched two-room dwelling of the second class.

The Caul family held the property for some years before it passed to Adam Martin in 1922. By the First General Revaluation of 1933–4 the house had become uninhabited. It passed to Robert Martin in 1935, who began raising and rebuilding it, increasing its assessed value to £2 5s, although it was used only as an agricultural outbuilding. In 1935 valuers described the house as completed externally but not internally—it contained no fireplaces, had unplastered walls, an unfixed staircase, and no flooring to the first floor. The building served as a potato store until recent times.

The house was extensively restored around 2005 as part of the Mourne Homesteads Scheme, one of seven dwellings renovated to raise awareness of traditional building loss in the Mourne Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and to develop the skills base for maintaining such structures. Although the restoration employed historically correct replacement fabric for the vernacular structure, the interior was completely replaced. The house is of a relatively common rural type and has been compromised by recent alterations and detailing, not representing the best examples of a traditional rural dwelling.