The Cottage, 29 Legananny Hall Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT31 9TL

The Cottage, 29 Legananny Hall Road, is a detached, single-storey vernacular house built around 1800, sitting at the end of a long lane reached from the northeast of number 25 Legananny Hall Road. It is four bays wide, rectangular in plan, and faces broadly south-southwest. The house is accompanied by a collection of rubblestone outbuildings — three to the front and a further outbuilding and a derelict former dwelling to the rear — forming what survives as a largely intact clachan, an increasingly rare vernacular settlement grouping. The whole arrangement, along with its setting, appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34.

The house was almost certainly thatched originally, as suggested by its vernacular layout and entrance lobby arrangement, though it has long since been reroofed in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles and cement-parged verges. The walls are of rubblestone under rough-cast render. Windows have been replaced with steel casement units set in square-headed openings with concrete sills, though much original fabric and the original plan form survive. Cast-iron guttering on drive-through brackets runs to the eaves, with metal downpipes. Two chimneys serve the house: a profiled yellow-brick stack rising from the west gable, and a rendered stack positioned approximately two-thirds of the way along the ridge towards the east.

The front, south-facing elevation has an almost central square-headed door opening fitted with a replacement door, flanked by two window openings on each side. The west gable is blank except for a metal former hearth crane attached to a pillar at the southwest corner. The rear, north-facing elevation is four windows wide: two steel casement windows to the right and two two-over-two timber sash windows to the left. The east gable has a single square-headed window opening with a timber casement at attic level.

The property includes five outbuildings, described as follows:

Outbuilding 1 was previously part of a longer row and is a former dwelling sitting to the north of the main house, parallel to it and separated by a grass court. It has a slate roof with a brick eaves detail and a rendered chimney stack on its east gable. The walls are of random rubble. The remains of a partly demolished separating wall survive on the west gable. The main south elevation has two window openings and a door opening, all with shallow brick arch lintels and occasional use of brick to square off the openings. This building is now derelict.

Outbuilding 2 is a small, freestanding rectilinear structure with random rubblestone walls and a slate roof with raised eaves. Its main elevation faces west onto the grass rear court and contains two openings: a central door and, to its right, a square six-pane metal window.

Outbuildings 3 and 4 are two attached outbuildings with random rubblestone walls and slate roofs, sited to the southeast of the main dwelling and oriented on a north–south axis. The larger, northern outbuilding has a single opening in its north gable: a barn-sized door with timber panelling above rising to the apex. The smaller outbuilding is attached to its south gable, stepping inward on the west elevation while aligning flush on the east elevation. It has a single opening on the east elevation fitted with a timber slatted door. A modern mono-pitched timber shed with a galvanised roof is attached to the south gable of this smaller structure.

Outbuilding 5 is a freestanding structure located to the southwest of the main dwelling's southwest gable corner. It has random rubble walls and a flush-ridged slate roof. Openings are confined to its north-facing main elevation: a wider-than-average door opening with a vertical timbered door, and a single window opening.

The history of the house and its associated buildings is well documented. The buildings are shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34, with two rectangular vernacular dwellings and three small outbuildings. They do not appear in the contemporary Townland Valuation notebook, as their value would have fallen below the £3 threshold for inclusion. Griffith's Valuation records the two houses as occupied by Robert and Adam Martin, tenant farmers who leased the properties from the Earl of Annesley along with plots of 13 and 6 acres respectively. Each house was valued at £1 15s, with a combined rent of £13 4s. When Robert Martin Senior died on 25th December 1891, he left his son Robert Martin the sum of one pound and the "wee meadow," along with one horse, one cart and harness, and one cow to his grandson Adam Martin and one cow to his grandson William John Martin. The 1901 census records farmer Robert H. Martin living at the house with his brother and sister, all in their twenties. By 1911, Robert Henry Martin had married and was living there with his wife and three young children.

The now-derelict neighbouring house was left by Adam Martin — who died on 26th June 1882 — to his "faithful and attentive" housekeeper Rose McIroy for her lifetime, with the property then to pass to William John Martin, who is recorded as resident from 1900. The 1901 census lists William John Martin there with his uncle, a cousin, and a male farm servant, and records the building at that time as a shop. Both houses were described in the census as second class, slated, and having three rooms.

By the time of the First General Revaluation, conducted between 1933 and 1957, the main dwelling had been revalued at £3, with agricultural outbuildings valued at £2 5s. Subsequent occupiers named in the valuation records were Edward Martin (1947), Thomas Martin (1951), and Robert Martin (date not recorded). The house at that time comprised a kitchen, a bedroom, and a scullery, with dimensions recorded for the house and three outbuildings, one of which was noted as having formerly been a thatched building before receiving a new loft and slated roof in the early 1930s. The neighbouring former dwelling of William John Martin fell vacant for a period and was used as an agricultural outbuilding, valued at £1 5s, before being converted back into a dwelling in the early 1940s and revalued at £1 15s.