County: Down Site name: THE WHITE HOUSE, Ballyspurge
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 25:19 Licence number: —
Author: Declan P. Hurl, Environment and Heritage Service, DoE(NI)
Site type: House - fortified house and Bawn
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 764116m, N 855000m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.417056, -5.471249
Trenches were opened up within the seventeenth-century house and its bawn to guide conservation techniques and in an attempt to uncover internal features.
The investigation revealed considerable modern disturbance, confirming the verbal report that there had been substantial deliberate disruption of the site thirty years previously. The original floor level survived at the north end, as did a flagged hearth. In the centre of the house were arcs of truncated post-holes, indicating earlier occupation of the site. Part of the shale face of a sundial was uncovered within the house.
Within the bawn, further disturbance had taken place. Traces of the returns of the missing north-west and north-east walls were established; there were no foundation trenches for any walls on the site.
5–33 Hill St., Belfast BTJ 2LA
