Ballealy Cottage, 70 Staffordstown Road, Randalstown, Antrim, Co Antrim, BT41 3LD

Ballealy Cottage is a fine early 19th century house built in a picturesque cottage style, dating from the 1830s. It was built by Lord O'Neill of Shane's Castle as a residence for the park-keeper of the deerpark on his estate. The building enjoys an unspoiled rural setting on the edge of a wooded demesne and has group value with the other listed buildings on the estate. It is notable for its unusually prominent chimneys, elaborate decorative timber barge boards, and its unusual historical associations.

The house is a 1½ storey stone-built structure with tall octagonal chimneys, and single storey returns which enclose a small open yard at the rear. The main entrance faces east.

The entrance front is arranged with a main block to the left, consisting of a half-hipped gable containing one window to each floor, with an entrance bay set back to the right, and a lower wing set back further to the right containing one window. Walls throughout the main block are of squared random rubble with lime mortar pointing, with a projecting sandstone plinth. The roofs are covered with Bangor blue slates laid in regular courses, and are finished with cusped tracery to the decorative timber barge boards, which terminate in large timber scrolls; clay ridge tiles complete the roof. Rainwater goods are cast iron gutters and downpipes throughout.

The windows are rectangular timber side-hung casements with top lights to the ground floor windows, set in chamfered reveals with flat arches to the heads and projecting stone cills. The three-light ground floor window to the main block is surmounted by a small slate-roofed canopy with a timber panelled soffit, carried on a pair of shaped stone corbels. The main entrance doorway contains a rectangular timber ten-panel door in a moulded timber frame, recessed in chamfered surrounds similar to those of the windows, and surmounted by a small slate canopy matching that over the large ground floor window. There is a stone doorstep flanked on each side by projecting stone blocks, each mounted with an iron bootscraper. In the wall above the entrance is a projecting carved circular stone resembling the point of a cannon. The single storey wing to the right-hand side of the entrance front contains a two-light casement window.

The south elevation shows the 1½ storey main block to the right, with a lower single storey rear return extending to the left and set back slightly. The main block has a half-hipped central breakfront containing a three-light window to the ground floor and a two-light window in a dormer above; the dormer has decorative timber barge boards matching those elsewhere, and the ground floor window is surmounted by a small slate-roofed canopy as described previously. Walling to the main block matches the entrance front. The single storey rear return to the left has a slated roof and matching rainwater goods; the walling matches that of the main block except that there is no plinth. It contains three two-light casement windows without top lights, in similar surrounds to those described previously, with projecting sandstone cills.

The rear elevation shows the rear gable of the main block as a blank wall of similar construction, with a half-hipped roof and decorative barge boards. The gable is surmounted by a chimney stack of squared basalt in regular courses, carrying a pair of tall octagonal pots in moulded stonework. Projecting from the gable is the single storey return, which itself returns across the rear elevation and back along the north elevation to enclose the small open rear yard. The rear face of this return has a hipped slate roof and contains a small smooth rendered chimney without pots. The rear wall contains two rectangular timber sheeted doorways in moulded timber frames: the one to the right is set in a flat arch with plain reveals and has projecting stone base blocks; the one to the left is similar but has a rough timber lintel. A cast iron gutter runs along this elevation. The rear wall of the gabled wing to the north of the main block has a tall stone chimney of similar construction to that of the main block, surmounted by a pair of octagonal pots, though shorter than those on the main block.

The north elevation shows the gabled north wing projecting to the left from the main block gable, with a lower single storey rear return to the right. The main block gable is blank, with decorative barge boards to the half-hip. The north wing gable matches the walling and plinth of the entrance elevation, and contains a large three-light window to the ground floor and a two-light window to the first floor; the gabled roof has decorative timber barge boards matching those throughout. The rear return to the right matches the walling of the wing except that there is no plinth; it has a slated roof, cast iron rainwater goods, and three windows similar to those on the south elevation return.

The building stands in a very rural location, reached by a very long and narrow lane off the main road, set within its own grassed area bordered by trees on the edge of the large Shane's Castle estate. The ground originally formed part of the estate but has since been cut off from the main area by what is now known as Randalstown Forest.

To the rear of the house is a rectangular open yard containing a single storey outbuilding along its west side. The yard is approached through a gateway formed by a pair of square basalt rubble piers with rhyolite caps but no gates, flanked on each side by low basalt rubble boundary walls which return along the north and south sides to abut the outbuilding. The outbuilding is of squared random rubble with a slated gabled roof, and contains a large rectangular garage opening without a door, three rectangular timber sheeted half-doors, and three small rectangular four-pane replacement fixed lights or casements, all with projecting sandstone cills.

To the north of the house stands a derelict venison house: a rectangular single storey stone building of basalt rubble with some sandstone quoins, now roofless. Its entrance front faces south and contains a rectangular doorway now blocked up, with rough timber lintels. The west wall contains a rectangular window opening now blocked with concrete blockwork and a concrete lintel. The south elevation is similar to the west. The east elevation is blank. The walls are covered with creeper. A survey carried out in 1971 recorded the building as then having a pyramidal slated roof at its rear.

Historically, the building is believed to be the structure described in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1838, which refers to it in the context of lodges in the deerpark as "the residence of the park-keeper and is built of stone, in miniature imitation of the lodge of the ranger of Windsor forest. Attached to it is an aviary on a small scale in which are some gold and silver pheasants." The precise date of construction is not known, but the building appears to date from the 1830s. It does not appear on the Ordnance Survey map of 1829 and 1832, on which a different building is shown in the vicinity without a name; it first appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1858, where it is named Deerpark Cottage. It was subsequently renamed Ballealy Cottage on the Ordnance Survey maps of 1902 and 1921. A tentative attribution made by one source in the 1990s to the Dublin architect Richard Morrison does not appear to have any sound basis.