Harrymount House Tullyvallen West Road Newtownhamilton Co Armagh BT35 0BU

Harrymount House is a rare surviving example of a Regency-style minor gentry residence dating to around 1800, making its first appearance in newspaper archives in 1831. It cannot be identified on Rocque's 1760 map of County Armagh, confirming a somewhat later construction date. The Pevsner Guide to South Ulster describes it as "a neat Late Georgian villa" and "a perfect example of the gentleman's model farm."

The house is a single-storey, five-bay symmetrical gentleman's residence facing southeast, built in a restrained neoclassical style and attractively sited on a slight rise in the landscape. It is approached from Tullyvallen West Road to the south via a gently curving, tree-lined avenue terminated by a set of early wrought iron gates hung on stone pillars. The gates bear the mark "S&E Gardner, Armagh," identifying them as products of the Armagh Foundry, established by Samuel Gardner in 1832 with his brother Edward joining shortly afterwards as partner. The foundry traded as Samuel Gardner & Son from around 1860, placing the likely date of the gates between 1832 and 1860. The foundry was a notable concern, responsible for a wide range of metal goods including field gates, tomb railings, ploughs and churns, as well as more complex engineering products such as pumps, steam engines, hydraulic rams, threshing and scutching machinery, and gas fittings. It also produced the iron obelisk of 1864 forming part of Armagh Observatory's Meridian Markers, and two important Dredge double-cantilever bridges at Caledon dating from 1844 and 1845.

The main dwelling includes returns to the west and east and is accompanied by a range of outbuildings to the north arranged to form a courtyard. The house appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834–5, captioned "Harry Mount," showing this plan form already in place. The front elevation has a natural slate hipped roof with flush verges and terracotta ridge tiles, with two brick-built chimneys positioned equidistant along the ridge line. The walls are lime-rendered rubblestone, likely sourced from a local quarry. There is no evidence of rainwater goods. The front elevation has a pair of square-headed window openings either side of a central arched doorway, with stone window sills. One window remains intact, retaining a three-over-three single-glazed timber sliding sash with margin panes and exposed box sashes. The remaining window openings have been infilled with rubble, concrete, and timber boarding. The central entrance door opening is infilled with corrugated sheeting.

The rear, northwest-facing elevation retains the remains of three square-headed window openings, all of which are blocked or partially blocked with infill rubble. To the immediate left of this elevation, a northward-projecting wall defines the eastern portion of the rear yard enclosure. To the right, a single-storey corrugated tin-sheet structure defines the western boundary, with a timber-framed and sheeted single door providing access to the right-hand side. The west gable has the remains of a one-over-one sliding sash window, centrally positioned within the outline of a defined brick arch opening that has been infilled with rubble stone. To the left of the main block are the remains of a single-storey wing with a pitched tin roof, hipped at its junction with the main dwelling, having two square-headed window openings with timber cladding infill, flanked on either side by the outlines of former openings infilled with rubble stone. Further to the left is the remains of an arched opening providing vehicular access into the courtyard. The east gable has a recent intervention in the form of a large square-headed opening partly framed in concrete blockwork. In the northwest corner of the enclosed courtyard are the rubble remains of a gabled two-storey outbuilding with remnants of external step access to the upper level and the remains of east-facing circular windows at that level. The rear enclosure is defined by rubble stone walling with occasional infill of concrete blockwork where stone is missing.

To the rear of the house, in axial relationship with it, sits a structure identified variously as a windmill in the McCutcheon industrial heritage archive and as a pigeon house in the Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record. This "turret," which appears uncaptioned on the first edition map of 1834–5 and is captioned on the second edition of 1861, stands 13 feet high with an internal diameter of 5 feet. Its dimensions make it considerably more likely to have functioned as a pigeon house, providing food for the residents of Harrymount through the harvesting of squabs — young pigeons raised in internal nestboxes. The turret stands at the summit of what is now known to be a Bronze Age cairn, a roughly circular mound of loose stones approximately 20 metres across and 3.5 metres high.

The house was the seat of the Barker family, after whom a road running for approximately one and a half miles to the north of Harrymount between Cullyhanna Road and Blaney Road is named. The name Harrymount appears in newspapers as the residence of J. P. Barker, local magistrate, in 1831, and of Henry Rowan Barker, solicitor, in 1836. Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of 1837 remarks of Newtownhamilton Parish that "there are many good houses in the parish, of which the principal is Harrymount, the residence of Henry Barker Esq." The Townland Valuation of 1837–9 records the house as the residence of William and then Arthur Barker, and the building appears twice in those records with some discrepancies in dimensions and quality marks. Both house and outbuildings were slated, with quality marks varying between A- and B-, suggesting the buildings were not new at that time but that the house itself was in fairly good repair, while some outbuildings may have been deteriorated by age. Unusually, the house included an account office measuring 23 by 13 by 8 feet, as well as a kitchen measuring 50 feet 6 inches by 13 by 8 feet 6 inches, and a scullery measuring 8 feet 6 inches by 4 by 5 feet 3 inches. The outbuildings comprised a potato house measuring 17 by 13 by 11 feet, a stable measuring 53 feet 6 inches by 13 feet 6 inches by 12 feet, a piggery measuring 8 feet 6 inches by 12 by 7 feet 3 inches, and a byre which is later identified in the 1839 valuation as a carriage house measuring 15 feet 6 inches by 11 feet 6 inches by 5 feet 3 inches.

The resident in 1837, William Barker Esquire, born 1802 as the son of the Reverend William Barker, Rector of Newtownhamilton, was a solicitor in the firm of Barker and Kaye. He was actively involved in the late 1830s in attempts to address an upsurge in agrarian unrest and sectarian violence in the Cullyhanna area, speaking at a large meeting of concerned local people at Cullyhanna in 1838, estimated to have attracted 30,000 attendees. He was nominated to a committee to monitor the situation locally, and in his role as a solicitor and prominent member of the Church of Ireland community he warned the population of the consequences should the area be "proclaimed" — that is, subjected to emergency measures including curfews, special jury trials, and extra taxation. He proposed that a Catholic, a Presbyterian, and a member of the established Church should each be selected in every townland to co-operate with the committee in preserving the peace. William Barker became a highly respected figure and when he died in 1866, over 2,000 people are said to have attended his funeral. William Barker left Harrymount around 1839, and Arthur Barker — most likely his son or brother — then became resident. By the time of Griffith's Valuation of around 1862, Arthur Barker was letting the house to Thomas Armstrong, a retired police officer, and the buildings were valued at £14. Armstrong's son John, who worked as a cashier at the Belfast Bank in Castleblayney, died at Harrymount Cottage in 1865 at the age of 25.

The valuation of Harrymount House was reduced to £9 in 1871 on account of the house being in a bad state. By 1876, the house was being rented to Arthur McKeown, a medical doctor. The house continued to decline, partly attributed to McKeown's financial difficulties. In 1888, McKeown and his son were convicted of assault against a bailiff who had come to Harrymount to execute a civil bill decree for money owed to a Crossmaglen auctioneer, and both were sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour. Arthur McKeown nonetheless continued to be recorded as resident, and it is probable that his wife remained in the house during his imprisonment. In 1888 it was noted that the landlord had changed to Sir William B. Kaye, QC and Assistant Under Secretary for Ireland, a relative of the Barker family who had previously shared a legal practice with them in the 1830s. In 1891–2, Arthur McKeown made a claim on the $1.5 million estate of a Pennsylvania oil tycoon named John McKeown, a story widely reported in Britain and Ireland. Arthur claimed to be John's brother, and the claim was taken seriously enough for a Pittsburgh lawyer to sail to Ireland to meet Arthur at Harrymount and gather evidence. The outcome is unclear, but newspaper reports strongly imply that Arthur, described at the time as "desperately poor," was to be paid off to prevent him from "annoying the persons to whom the personal estate has been distributed." Arthur McKeown appears to have remained at Harrymount until 1898, when the house and land were purchased by Mrs Georgina Leslie of Clontarf, Dublin under the Land Purchase Acts, although she does not appear to have lived there and the house fell vacant. In 1905 Mrs Leslie attempted to sell what was advertised as the "very attractive farm of land and residence known as Harrymount," with little reference made to the house itself, which appears to have been falling into disrepair. By 1911 the property had been sold to E. Caherty and was subsequently let to Anne Carraher in 1917 and James Caherty in 1919. By 1917, the house was noted as dilapidated, the outbuildings described as being of no value, and the house as "almost in ruins" with only two rooms habitable, leading to a reduction in valuation to £1.

At the time of the First General Revaluation of 1933–5, James Caherty was the sole occupant of the house, which was in a dilapidated condition and only half in use, with part of the former dwelling being used as outbuildings. The accommodation at that time comprised a kitchen, three bedrooms, and one reception room; two bedrooms had boarded floors while the kitchen, the reception room, and one further bedroom had concrete floors; all ceilings were plastered. The dimensions recorded for the single-storey dwelling house — 53 by 20 feet — match those given for the main dwelling in the Townland Valuation of 1837, with a return of 13 by 23 feet corresponding to the account office described in both the 1837 and 1839 valuations. The Carraher and Caherty families continued to occupy the house alternately up to 1957. The large-scale Ordnance Survey map of 1956 shows that the outbuildings to the rear had begun to lose their roofs, and field inspection has confirmed that all former outbuildings are now roofless or ruined. The dwelling house itself and the attached former account office remain roofed, but the interiors have been stripped and show signs of having been used as agricultural outbuildings.

The house is set within a miniature mature parkland framed by mature deciduous trees, and long views are framed by stands of those trees. The courtyard enclosure is further defined by walls along the north and east sides and stands in axial relationship with the Bronze Age cairn and the turret or pigeon house behind.