Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB09/04/007

Address :
Drum Manor (remains) Drum Manor Forest Park Drum Road Cookstown Co Tyrone

Townland:
Oaklands

---

Survey 2:
B2

Date of Listing:
01/10/1975 00:00:00

Date of De-listing:

Current Use:
Garden Features

Former Use
Country House

Conservation Area:
No

Industrial Archaeology:
No

Vernacular:
No

Thatched:
No

Monument:
No

Derelict:
No

---

OS Map No:
124-05

IG Ref:
H7640 7779

---

Owner Category

Central Govt

Exterior Description And Setting

The maintained ruins of a 19th century Tudor Revival and Gothic Revival country house of which only a castellated four storey tower remains intact. It stands within its own extensive estate, now a Forest Park, in a rural area. The ruins consist of the ground floor, and a small part of the first floor perimeter walls of the house which together with the tower form the four sides of a garden court. The main entrance front is the one facing north. Walls are constructed of regular coursed sandstone ashlar, with projecting stringcourses and weatherings on the outer faces; on the inner faces they are now of exposed rubble stonework where originally they would have been lined with interior finishes. The only glazed windows are in the tower, the rest being either open or blocked up. The tower is of square plan, of four storeys, with an octagonal stair turret at the south-east corner rising to a fifth storey. A projecting weathered plinth, and two projecting stringcourses run through both main tower and turret, as well as a deep frieze of cusped panelling. On both main tower and turret, oversailing crenellated parapets are supported on machicolations of massive size on the main tower and smaller on the turret. The turret contains narrow chamfered slit openings stepping up its various faces, with a blind arrow-loop of cruciform shape in the north, south, east, and west faces. Windows in the main tower are timber sliding sashes, 1 over 1, with horns, square headed to the first three storeys, and segmental headed to the top storey. Those in the first two storeys are single lights surmounted by rectangular drip mouldings; those in the top two storeys are grouped in twos or threes, without drip mouldings. Access to the tower is by a rectangular doorway at first floor level on the south face, reached by a new flight of exterior steps paved in concrete flags in the north-west corner of the courtyard. The tower is linked to the main north wall by a flying archway of flattened Gothic, or Tudor form, carried on shaped corbels, with quatrefoil sinkings in the spandrels and a Gothic panelled parapet, which forms an entrance to the courtyard. Recessed behind it is a Tudor-arched open doorway up a short flight of steps, surmounted by a drip moulding carried on carved zoomorphic corbels, the one to the left in the form of a lion, the one to the right in the form of a grotesque beast. The north wall of the courtyard garden has single-light rectangular window openings and larger two-light openings with stone mullions. A large first floor window opening contains a three-light stone traceried window in Perpendicular Gothic style with cusped heads, surmounted by a rectangular Tudor-style drip moulding. The projecting porch contains a Tudor arched doorway, flanked by weathered angle buttresses, which incorporate miniature colonnettes with stylised foliate capitals of High Victorian type, and surmounted by a frieze of cusped Gothic panels and a foliated cornice, both raking over the doorway on the front face, and carrying bulky crocketed and finialed pinnacles at each extremity. In the centre of the frieze is a coat of arms carved in high relief. The side walls of the porch contain a traceried window opening surmounted by a rectangular drip moulding. To the east of the porch a weathered buttress incorporating a circular column with a stylised foliate capital, supports the base mouldings of a former canted oriel now removed at first floor level. On the east front there is a central projecting gabled porch, flanked each side by shallow rectangular bays. The bays each contain a large square window opening now missing its mullions, with a crenellated top to the wall between diagonal buttresses. The porch contains a triune arrangement of a doorway and sidelights divided by stone mullions, with cusped toplights, surmounted by a Gothic panelled gable containing a carved coat of arms, all recessed between angle buttresses which rise to corner pinnacles which consist of incomplete reset fragments. At the southern extremity of the east front is a projecting octagonal corner bay with crenellations. The south front is comparatively plain in character, containing rectangular two-light stone mullioned window openings with some bay divisions marked by plain buttresses which have been later capped by reset pinnacles which were probably originally from the first floor parapet level. At the western end of the former south wall of the house is a Tudor arched doorway with drip moulding leading into an open area to the west of the courtyard garden. The west front of the courtyard garden consists of a largely blind wall which contains a segmental arched former coach entrance, not in Tudor or Gothic Revival style but more classicised in feel, with rusticated voussoirs, the two at the extremities, at the springing line, of unusual scalloped form. The archway contains a pair of flat ironwork gates, and is surmounted on the outside by a coat of arms carved in high relief. Within the courtyard garden the inner faces of the bounding walls are of now exposed rubble stonework where originally they would have been lined with normal interior finishes. There are some newly created buttresses in places to support the north and south walls. Above the archway in the west wall is an inscription plaque recording the two main phases of the building of the house. The area inside the walls is laid out as a garden, with flower beds, paths, and crazy-paved and cobbled areas, with architectural fragments placed at random. SETTING: Along the south side of the building is a terrace walk raised above the inclined grassy garden beyond on rubble stonework retaining walls surmounted by a balustraded sandstone parapet of stop-chamfered blocks supporting sandstone copings. This wall and parapet returns at the east end, in line with the building, and contains along its south face two bastion-like projections which each have pairs of diagonally placed stone steps down to the lower lawn. At the west end of the parapeted terrace is a short flight of broad stone steps between short square piers. Within the terrace walk, against the south screen wall and facing the western bastion is an open stone-pillared shelter with a hipped concrete roof, which may be a later creation from earlier fragments, as it does not accord in style with either the Tudor or Gothic phases of the house. Extending for a considerable distance to the west in line with the house is a roughly coursed rubble stone wall of plain character whose only special feature is a tall Gothic archway containing a pair of iron gates and surmounted by a stepped gable containing a circular datestone inscribed '1876'. At the western extremity of the screen wall is a partly walled garden entered by an ironwork gatescreen which incorporates an elliptically arched overthrow. The walled garden has walls of rubble stonework lined in part on the inside with brickwork. Attached to the outer north-east corner of the walled garden is a two-storey three-bay gabled house. In the south-west corner of the car park, is an L-shaped arrangement of outbuildings and an open modern picnic shelter constructed of various architectural elements from the main house, none of special interest in their rearranged form. To the north-west of the remains of the house, the main avenue crosses a bridge carrying it over a minor ravine. The bridge has parapet walls of coursed sandstone with short square piers, over a skew-archway of brick vaulting, with a notched brickwork drip moulding. The entrance and exit to the estate are marked by modern gateways.

Architects

Hastings, William

Historical Information

A manorial style house of 1829, originally called Oaklands, remodelled and extended in 1869 to the designs of William Hastings, architect of Belfast, and renamed Drum Manor. The house of 1829 was built for Major Richardson Brady and comprised a triple-gabled east front, of which only the ground floor blind walling, rectangular bay windows and polygonal south-east bay remain. The extensions of 1869 were built for Viscount Stuart, and were described at the time as the "tower and main building" of which only the four storey tower survives intact. Of Hastings' original main building the remaining north front, including the main entrance porch, the south front, and probably also the porch on the east side may be identified. In addition, the south terrace balustrading and steps, and the screen wall and gateway of 1876, may be attributed to Hastings. Other work of Hastings here included the two gate lodges, also of the 1870s. The house was semi-derelict by 1970, with slated roofs, but roofs were later removed, gables taken down, and the entire interior space, apart from the tower, cleared away to form an open garden within mainly ground floor perimeter walls. References - Primary Sources 1. OS Map of 1833. 2. Inscribed plaque recording dates of 1829 and 1869 on the inside of the west wall. 3. Datestone of 1876 over archway in screen wall to west of car park. Secondary Sources 1. S. Lewis, A topographical dictionary of Ireland (London, 1837), Vol 1, p 395; and Vol 2, p 88. 2. R.M. Young, Belfast and the Province of Ulster in the 20th Century (Brighton, 1909), p 307. 3. A.J. Rowan, The Buildings of Ireland: North-West Ulster (Harmondsworth, 1979), pp 50, 327. 4. J.A.K. Dean, The Gate Lodges of Ulster: A Gazetteer (UAHS, Belfast 1994), p 141. 5. J. Williams, A companion guide to architecture in Ireland 1837-1921 (Dublin, 1994), p 357.

Criteria for Listing

Architectural Interest

A. Style B. Proportion C. Ornamentation H-. Alterations detracting from building J. Setting K. Group value

Historic Interest

X. Local Interest V. Authorship

Evaluation

This is the extensive remains of a former 19th century country house built originally in a Tudor Revival style and then remodelled and extended in a Gothic Revival style, but now comprising only the ground floor and a small part of the first floor perimeter walls of the house which together with a surviving four-storey tower form the four sides of a garden court. The major part of the completed house, including the highly ornate main entrance porch and the dominant tower were the work of William Hastings, one of the leading architects of the time in Northen Ireland. Although much of both Hastings' very characteristic work of 1869 to 1876, and much of the earlier house of 1829 which he extended, has now disappeared, the portions which remain here form a very picturesque garden feature in a very pleasant setting, replete with both an intact tower of some substance and a number of other interesting architectural details and features, enhanced by such associated elements as the south terrace balustrading and steps, screen wall with an archway of 1876, an ironwork gatescreen to the walled garden which also contains a 2 storey house.. Together with the two former gate lodges these remaining structures combine to form a group of considerable local interest.

General Comments

Date of Survey

11 February 2008