The building

Thomas Cooley’s stables, built for Sir Capel Molyneux

Pediment and oculus lifted over open arches, the arcade running the length of the front, set on a hill above fifty acres of water.

Thomas Cooley won the competition for Dublin’s Royal Exchange — now City Hall — at twenty-nine, and spent his last years remaking Georgian Armagh for Archbishop Robinson. These stables, built for Sir Capel Molyneux around 1782, are among the few Cooley buildings outside the city.

A local historian recorded the “grand old coach house and offices designed by the great Thomas Cooley”, where “horses stood one above the other”. In the Molyneux years twelve orphan girls were boarded and schooled here by the ladies of the house; in 1953 the Belfast Telegraph found “the splendid coach-house, designed by Cooley” at work as hospital workshops.

Behind it, within the sale, is a second courtyard of stone farm ranges built with the block — an arcaded range of stone arches opening on to the court, plain well-built limestone ranges about a lawn, and the main shed.

Proportion does not weather.

The front of the stable block: pediment, oculus and open arches — Pediment, oculus and open arches: Cooley’s front, c.1782

The arcaded front with the lake beyond — Pediment, oculus and open arches: Cooley’s front, c.1782

Map of Ireland showing Castledillon in County Armagh

Location

Castledillon demesne, Armagh

Castledillon demesne — also written Castle Dillon — off the Drumilly Road, Armagh, Northern Ireland.

The demesne lies between Armagh city and Loughgall, in the orchard country of north Armagh. Castledillon has been a single estate since 1610; the Molyneux family bought it in 1664 and held it for more than 250 years, assembling a 6,000-acre estate around a demesne of some 600 acres. Sir Capel Molyneux built the park gates and offices — “the most costly park gates and offices of hewn stone in the three kingdoms” — commissioned Cooley for the coach house and stables, and in 1782 raised a sixty-foot obelisk to the Irish Volunteers that remains the landmark of the park.

The stables were built for the Molyneux baronets of Castledillon, who held the estate from 1664 for more than 250 years.

Belfast International Airport: approx. 45 minutes
Dublin Airport: approx. 1 hour 30 minutes

“The sudden and unexpected view of an extensive lake covered with water-fowl.”

Sir Capel Molyneux’s contemporaries, on the approach to Castledillon

The proposition

A Georgian landmark with a funding route already mapped

Buildings like this usually don’t add up. You pay one number to buy, a much bigger one to restore, and finish with something worth less than the two together. That arithmetic is why so many of them end up as rubble.

Here the arithmetic has an answer.

Northern Ireland’s enabling development policy allows building that would normally be refused — usually new houses in open countryside — where the value it creates pays for the rescue of a heritage building that nothing else can save.

It applies to listed buildings. It applies to registered historic parks. This is both.

The test

Cost of full restoration, including a proper developer’s return
−Value of the finished buildings
=the conservation deficit

That deficit, independently assessed, sets how much new building is permitted. Evidence, not argument — and the enabling element is scaled to it and no further.

In practice

How it works in practice

Start with the courtyard

Somewhere to live

Stone ranges built with the main block, one of them finely arcaded. Understood to be a conversion rather than a rescue, and a simpler consent than the principal building — though still a consent, and a matter for your own advisers. A house of real character with the arcade as its loggia, or courtyard dwellings, studios, lettings. Any application would be likely to be considered in the context of the site as a whole.

Then the long work

The Cooley block

Restoring it is what the whole exercise is for; the enabling houses are how it is paid for. The two are normally tied together in the consent, so the building gets done.

And what it becomes

Your own chapter

A country house of the first rank, or courtyard homes, or somewhere to stay, with fifty acres of water below the windows — your own chapter in the estate’s story, in an architecture nobody could commission again at any price.

The route

The policy, and the proof it works here

A buyer who can fund the restoration outright needs none of this. For everyone else, there is a policy written for exactly this kind of building.

What it is. Development that would normally be refused — typically new houses in the countryside — is permitted because the value it creates pays for the rescue of a heritage building that could not otherwise be saved. Northern Ireland adopted the policy in 2014 (PPS 23), and schemes have since been approved here. A fuller explanation of enabling development, in plain English →

How the sums work. The full cost of the rescue, including a proper return for the developer, is set against what the finished building will be worth. The difference is the conservation deficit, and it sets the amount of new building allowed. The figures are independently checked, so the case rests on evidence, not optimism.

Understand the placeA conservation statement and condition survey.
Prove the gapA transparent appraisal of cost against finished value, independently checked.
Size and site the schemeThe minimum new building that closes the gap.
Agree it earlyPre-application talks with the council and the Historic Environment Division.
Build it togetherConsent links the restoration and the new homes, so the two move forward side by side.

Two ways to close the gap

A choice of sites

1. New homes on the footprint of the ranges demolished last century, behind the block — previously developed ground within the historic layout rather than open countryside.

2. If more is needed, a parcel of land elsewhere in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon council area may be available, subject to agreement with its owner

Two candidate sites, so the case need not rest on a single planning decision.

It has been done here

Upperlands, Co. Londonderry (2022). The Minister approved the heritage-led regeneration of the listed William Clark linen mill, including 66 homes within the listed buildings and 144 new-build homes.

Belvoir Park, Belfast (2024). Belfast City Council approved 33 new homes expressly as enabling development to restore three listed pavilions.

The adviser. Dermott Farrell of Farland Legacy Projects brings enabling development experience to the case and will meet purchasers on site.

Before you ring anybody

Request the information pack

The documents a serious enquirer needs before forming a view: the listing details, the 2009 transfer map showing rights of way and services to the site, the folio map, and the topographical survey.

No obligation, no sales call. Tell me a little about what interests you and I will send the pack across.

Enquiries

The stables are offered by Bracken Lodge Properties Ltd and are marketed locally by Manor and Mill. Enquiries are welcome from anywhere in the world, through the agent or direct to the owner below. Viewing is strictly by appointment; parts of the buildings are unsafe and visitors must be accompanied.

Tap Copy and paste the address into your own email — links from this page are not always able to open a mail app.

OwnerGary Reid

Email1garreid@gmail.com

Phone+44 7824 905427

CompanyBracken Lodge Properties Ltd · NI052003

AdviserDermott Farrell, Farland Legacy Projects — enabling development

Castledillon Stables

What is for sale