Mobarnan House

On a slight rise in relatively flat terrain within a landscaped demesne. According to the Civil Survey (1654-6) in 1640 Mobarnan ‘hath on it a small Castle wantinge repair’ and the proprietor was ‘Teig Carran of Mobarnan Irish Papist’ (Simington 1931, vol. 1, 201). The present Mobernan House is a multi-period building with three main phases, a tower house (TS062-072----), a late 17th/early 18th-century house (int. dims. 6.3m N-S; 15.01m E-W) and an early 19th-century house (ext. dims. 7.7m N-S; 23.4m E-W) built onto the S façade of the latter. The late 17th/early 18th-century house incorporates the remains of a tower house (int. dims. 6.3m N-S) at its eastern end, reusing the N (T 1.08m), E (Wth 1.08m; Wth at base 1.27m) and S walls (T 1.08m). The W wall of the tower house does not survive. The late 17th/early 18th-century house is a five-bay, three-storey house (wall T 0.8m N wall; 0.9m S wall) with gable ended chimneys. It has a low basement (L 8.5m E-W) under the western end. The fact that it does not continue for the full length of the house suggests that it stopped short of the area occupied by the tower house. The external N wall of the tower house has a high, gradual base-batter (H c. 5-6m; Wth 0.3m). Unusually this base-batter continues around the W end of the later attached house and its W gable, intended perhaps to create an external symmetry between the old and new build. There is a projecting stair return in the centre of the N wall. The house originally had a steeper pitched roof. It is likely that when the 19th-century front was added, an extra storey was added onto the older house with a shallower roof to match that on the 19th-century house. Another lower projection was subsequently added onto the N face of the projecting stair return. The original leasehold for Mobarnan House dates to 1683 (pers. comm. Richard and Sandra Craik-White, 8 June 2015). A ex-situ date stone (Wth 0.42m; H 0.31m), inserted into a later building immediately E of the 19th-century house, bears the inscription, ‘Mathew Jacob Esqr 1734’. This suggests that the house incorporating the tower house was either built in 1734 or that it dates to the late 17th-century and was significantly modified in 1734.