1840 – Cecil Manor, Augher, Co. Tyrone

Architect: William Farrell

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Cecil Manor was described as ‘rather forbidding and architecturally uninteresting’ with wide set windows in large solid expanses of wall underneath an overhanging roof with a bracket cornice. There was an unimposing gateway beyond which a broad coach road wound for some distance through the grounds to end with a final sweep before the front entrance. After the death in London of the owner Francis P. Gervais in 1918, it was left empty and for a time was considered for the purpose of a secondary school. Described in 1925 as “It is a four-storeyed building with a superior cut-stone finish. The first and second flats are large and well-ventilated, with folding doors which can be so arranged that they will hold any size of meeting. At the rear is a fine tennis court.” The school never materialised and by the 1930s the house, had an “air of desolation”. It was sold and later demolished by the new owners.

Published October 12, 2022 | Last Updated February 13, 2024