17 Cloghinny Road, Forkhill, Newry, Co Armagh, BT35 9RY

A particularly long single-storey three-bay vernacular dwelling with a one-and-a-half-storey outbuilding to the right gable, reflecting the tradition of extending both upwards and longitudinally. It forms one of a group of three dwellings along with miscellaneous outbuildings, now in various stages of dereliction.

The main house is aligned west to east on a lane to the north of Cloghinny Road. It has a pitched natural slate roof with brick chimneys to the left gable and at the party wall between bays one and two (from left). Rainwater goods are absent. The walls are whitewashed rubble stone. All windows are top-hung timber casements with concrete cills. The principal elevation faces south. The left and right bays each have a window to the centre. The central bay has a window to the left (slightly taller than the others) and a windbreak porch to the right. The porch has a natural slate cat-slide roof and a tongue-and-groove sheeted door to the front face. The right and left cheeks are blank. The left gable is blank. The rear elevation has a window at right on the central bay.

The right gable is completely abutted by the adjoining one-and-a-half-storey outbuilding, detailed as a house with a brick chimney to its left gable. All openings are tongue-and-groove sheeted. The south elevation has a central door to the ground floor with a window opening to the first floor. The exposed left gable is blank. The rear elevation has a door to the upper level, accessed by twelve external granite steps. Its right gable is abutted by a single-storey shed, similarly detailed. The exposed section is blank. The shed has a central door to the south elevation and is abutted to the extreme right end by a whitewashed boundary wall. The right gable is blank. The rear elevation has a timber-shuttered window with granite cill.

To the front is a small domestic yard completely enclosed by a whitewashed rubble stone boundary wall with cement-rendered coping, broken by outbuildings to either end. The yard is accessed by wrought-iron gates to the north and west of the site and a metal farm gate to the east, all supported on either square-in-section or circular-in-section gate piers with cement pyramidal or conical copings. To the rear is a similarly detailed single-storey dwelling, a number of outbuildings, and a rubble stone well; others are now in poor condition.

Although a building is shown at this spot on the 1835 Ordnance Survey map, it does not share the ground plan of the present one. The building is probably of mid-19th century date, as it is shown on the 1862 map, and its rateable valuation of 15 shillings does not change thereafter.