Originally from Ayrshire, the first Conynghams arrived in Ireland at some date in the early 17th century and by the time of the outbreak of the Confederate Wars in 1641, the family owned property in the cities of Armagh and Derry, along with lands in both their counties and Tyrone. In 1653, Colonel William Conyngham, one of the Commonwealth commissioners in County Armagh during and after this tumultuous period, bought for £200 ‘the town, village, hamlet, place, baliboe or parcel of land called Ballydrum in the parish of Ardtra’ in County Derry, running to 350 acres. There may have been a pre-existing house of some kind already on this property, but if so it was replaced by another constructed by the colonel’s son, likewise called William and remembered as ‘Good Will’. In 1680 he had married 16 year old Anne Upton of Castle Upton, County Antrim and under the terms of the couple’s wedding settlement had agreed to provide his wife with ‘a convenient house of lime and stone, two stories high with necessary office houses.’ This became known as Springhill, its name derived from a nearby spring.

Springhill is a rare example of a 17th century Ulster Planter’s house which has survived to the present. When first constructed, presumably not long after the marriage of William and Anne Conyngham, the building was, as agreed by the terms of the settlement, of two storeys with rough-cast walls and slate roof, although the door was then off-centre and the canted bay wings did not exist. However, the two freestanding outbuildings placed at 90 degrees on either side of the main house do date from this first period. Thereby creating a forecourt, that to the left was occupied by senior staff and behind it was a yard holding turf shed, brew house, laundry and slaughter house, with enclosed gardens beyond. That to the right provided accommodation for other workers on the estate, the ground behind it sloping down to another pair of yards containing stables and, at furthest remove, a dovecote. William and Anne Conyngham had no direct heir, so when he died in 1721, the property here passed to a nephew, George Butle who duly assumed his uncle’s surname. The son of a Belfast merchant, he appears to have made no changes to the house, unlike his son William who around 1770 added wings to the house, that to the left being used as a nursery, that to the right a drawing/ballroom. As had been the case earlier in the century, he died in 1784 without a son to inherit, so Springhill passed to his younger brother David but, following his own death four years later, the estate was inherited once more by a nephew, George Lenox who chose to hyphenate his name, becoming Lenox-Conyngham. His son, William Lenox-Conynham, made further alterations to the house, adding a dining room in 1820, the year after his marriage to Charlotte Staples of Lissan, County Tyrone (see Barefoot but Battling « The Irish Aesthete). Three more generations of the family owned Springhill until, shortly before his death in 1957, Captain William Lowry Lenox-Conyngham passed responsibility for the property to the National Trust, although his mother Mina Lenox-Conyngham continued to live there until her own death four years later: she is remembered for writing An Old Ulster House, a detailed history of Springhill and its owners. 

As mentioned, Springhill is notable for being the best preserved example of a 17th century Planter house in Ulster, despite the later additions. Fortunately the Conynghams and then Lenox-Conynghams seem to have thrown nothing away, and therefore the interiors retain almost all their original appearance and contents, another rarity. It is not difficult to distinguish the period in which each room was constructed, since they then underwent little alteration. To the front, there are three main rooms, centred on the entrance hall, behind which rises a staircase with yew banisters and oak treads. To the left of the hall is a study, originally the parlour. In the 19th century, when alterations were being made to the house, this room was given oak panelling but after the National Trust assumed responsibility for the building and undertook restoration work, English hand-blocked paper was discovered still intact on the walls. Also here are a number of antique firearms, including a long gun presented to Alderman James Lenox after the Siege of Derry. To the right of the hall was the former dining room, turned into a library in the 19th century when the bookcases were installed here; as elsewhere, the contents – some 3,000 volumes collected over two and a half centuries – remained when Springhill became a National Trust property. Beyond lies the high-ceilinged drawing room of the 1770s and behind that the dining room added half a century later. Although some alterations to the property have been made (a 19th century smoking room, for example, was demolished by the NT in the aftermath of it assuming responsibility) Springhill better conveys the evolution of an historic house and its various residents than many others open to the public. As Mina Lenox-Conyngham wrote in An Old Ulster House, even the trees in the surrounding demesne ‘could tell many a tale of the nine generations of the family who have walked beneath their shade and have talked together of interests and projects, fears and misgivings for the dear old home whose spell must have twined itself around their hearts.’ 

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