House at Redmond's Cross, (Mullaghbawn Folk Museum), Cowan Road, Tullymacreeve, Camlough, Co. Armagh, BT35 9TJ

House at Redmond's Cross

A single-storey, two-bay, direct-entry thatched house dating from the early 19th century, now operated as the Mullaghbawn Folk Museum. The building and its associated outbuildings are Grade B2 listed.

The house is situated on rising ground above Redmond's Cross, approximately eight miles south-west of Newry on the road towards Crossmaglen, facing south-east. The roadside boundary comprises a roughly topped random stone wall with round stone pillars supporting a pair of timber gates.

The main house is built of rubble stone with a whitened finish. The thatch roof oversails the gables, with rendered corbelled chimneystacks rising above each gable end. The roof timbers are sawn. The south-east-facing front incorporates a timber-framed and sheeted half-entrance door set within a recessed windbreak porch under an extension of the main roof. This entrance is flanked on either side by a fixed timber 1/1 plain sashed window with exposed framing but without a sill. The rear wall contains no openings. The layout is unchanged and detailing including windows, doors and fireplaces remains intact.

A cart shed with a lean-to corrugated iron roof occurs on the north-east gable. Close to the main road stands a thatched outbuilding with material draped over the gables and secured by metal straps at the sides. Its entrance faces the main house and comprises a timber-framed and sheeted door to the left of a plain sashed vertically-sliding window with moulded sash stops but without a sill, set in horizontal timber boarding finished with a timber bargeboard. This is enclosed within stone jambs, a form of construction that continues below the window on the right-hand side.

Between this building and a rear structure, accessed via a flat iron gate, the surface is of concrete. The rear block has a lean-to corrugated iron roof with two full-length plastic rooflights and metal straps securing the roof structure. A pair of timber-framed and sheeted doors provides access. The walls of this group are of random stone, partly whitened. The walls of both front and rear buildings have been raised. On the south-west side of the site are remains of a dancing platform.

The house appears on Ordnance Survey maps of 1835 and 1862, though the outbuildings are not shown on these early maps. The premises were presented to the parish, which subsequently passed them to the Mullach Ban Folklore and Historical Society. A restoration was undertaken in 1971.