1 Milltown Street, Milltown, Warrenpoint, Newry, Co Down, BT34 3PS

1 Milltown Street, Milltown, Warrenpoint

A Tudor-Picturesque house built between 1880 and 1899, set in a mature garden on the east side of Milltown Street. The building occupies a site previously used by a school belonging to the Church Education Society from the mid-1800s until around 1888. The new house appears to represent a fresh construction rather than an adaptation of the school building, though some elements such as windows may have been incorporated from the earlier structure. This is evidenced by the differing plan forms shown on the 1860 and 1901-02 Ordnance Survey maps, and the first record of a house on the property appearing in the Valuation Revision book in 1888.

The house is one and a half storeys arranged over three bays, with a rear return. The steeply pitched natural slate roof is aligned north-south with boxed eaves, cusped timber bargeboards, and exposed purlin tails to the end gables. Half-round metal rainwater goods complete the roofline. Between the central and left bays stand a pair of tall rendered chimneysstacks with concrete coping, set at angles on a common rendered base.

The walls are cement-dashed with a smooth rendered basecourse. The principal elevation faces west and features a gabled central porch with roof detailing that matches the main house roof, tied into its front pitch. The porch front is smooth rendered with the main entrance in a plain rectangular opening. The reproduction door is four-panelled with the top two panels glazed and the bottom two bolection-moulded, flanked by narrow four-paned sidelights. The gable apex is smooth rendered with three raised render verticals mimicking half-timbering and creating four panels. The cheeks of the porch are blank.

To the left and right bays of the façade are single rectangular landscape-format window openings with smooth rendered architraves and granite cills. Each contains three timber lattice casements with shallow Tudor-arched heads.

The left (north) and right (south) elevations are identical in treatment. The front and rear walls advance to stand flush with the overhanging eaves, thereby creating recessed gable walls. Both side elevations have a ground-floor window matching those on the façade, and to the upper-floor apex is a 2-by-2 vertically divided sliding sash window. The apex is rendered as the porch.

The rear (east) elevation is abutted at its centre by a wide rear return. The exposed right section of the rear wall is blank, while the exposed left section has a rectangular window opening containing a pair of Tudor casements.

The rear return has a pitched natural slate roof aligned west-east, which ties into the rear pitch of the main roof. It carries a cast-iron skylight on its south pitch and a small modern flue pipe on its north pitch, both with modern ventilators. Gabled dormers to the centre of each pitch have bargeboards detailed as the main roof and each contains a 2-by-2 sliding sash window with matching 1-by-1 sidelights; the cheeks are blank.

The slightly recessed gable wall of the return has a window (as those to the dormers) set to ground-floor right. Above at upper-floor level are a 2-by-2 sliding sash window and a 1-by-1 sliding sash window to its left, each with concrete cill. The right (north) cheek of the return has a pair of modern glazed doors. The left (south) cheek has a small windbreak porch to centre under a cat-slide of the main roof, with a half-glazed door as the front door and blank cheeks flanked left and right by Tudor lattice casement windows.

The mature garden setting contains a small modern shed and a larger garage to the southeast of the house. Both are constructed in rubble stone with pitched natural slate roofs. The garden is enclosed to north, west, and south by Milltown Street and the Donaghaguy Road, and rises to the east where the house is situated. The boundary to the east adjoins an adjacent house. A rubble stone wall encloses the garden to the west, continuing to Donaghaguy Road as a modern rubble stone wall which sweeps inwards to the drive at the south. The drive is entered through a pair of modern timber gates supported on plain timber posts.