Shane's Castle (Mansion), Shane's Castle Park, Antrim, Co Antrim, BT41 4NE

Shane's Castle is a two-storey rendered neo-Georgian mansion with an extensive range of basalt outbuildings. The main entrance faces north.

The north elevation is symmetrically composed with a central entrance bay three windows wide, recessed behind projecting end bays each two windows wide with one window to the front return walls. The roof is hipped with Bangor blue slates laid in regular courses, featuring a central flat-roofed dormer and prominent ashlar stone chimneys with moulded cornices and modern pots. The walls are rendered in fine roughcast with a moulded rendered plinth, moulded cornice, and plain coping to the parapet. Concealed gutters are fitted with cast iron downpipes and hoppers.

Windows throughout are rectangular timber sliding sash, vertically hung with 6 over 6 panes and horns, set in moulded surrounds with projecting cills. Ground floor windows are taller than those on the first floor. The principal doorway is set within a continuous semi-circular headed raised surround with a coved front, containing a pair of timber panelled double doors flanked by fluted Ionic pilasters surmounted by a radial semi-circular fanlight. A concrete doorstep and flagged area lie outside.

To the right, set well back, a lower two-storey flat-roofed link block connects the main house to the outbuildings. This link block contains two windows, one to each floor, with 3 over 3 sashes with horns. The west wall of the main house has one 6 over 6 sashed window and a circular window overlooking the link block.

The east elevation is two-storey and three-bay, with similar walling and window detailing to the entrance front. A low iron gate and plain railings project from this elevation. The rear elevation is similarly two-storey and symmetrical, consisting of a slightly projecting central entrance bay with three windows wide to each flanking side. The central bay contains a rectangular tripartite first-floor window and a ground-floor doorcase comprising a pair of rectangular double doors flanked by side lights and surmounted by a semi-circular radially glazed fanlight over a deep panelled frieze. An armorial plaque, reused from an earlier building on the demesne, is set in the wall above the fanlight. Central openings in each flanking wall contain doorways also bearing old armorial plaques. A flagged patio area bounded by curving hedges lies outside the French windows. A lower two-storey flat-roofed link block extends to the left, set well back, connecting with the basalt outbuildings.

The house stands within a large demesne, connected to the south-east corner of an extensive range of outbuildings, adapting part of these outbuildings as its service wing. This section is identified by rendered walls rather than masonry finish. The front overlooks a gravelled forecourt bounded on the west side by the long two-storey entrance block of the outbuildings, lined with segmental arched garages and surmounted by a clock turret. The forecourt is approached by a driveway from the east and entered via a gateway.

The rear and east elevations overlook a garden laid out with lawns and bounded to the east and south by walls. At the north-east corner of the bounding wall is a small low polygonal turret base, the surviving portion of a taller turret built in the 1860s that terminated a wing of outbuildings since demolished to make way for the new mansion. Near the south-east corner of the same bounding wall is the surviving portion of a ha-ha. Gardens to the south are laid out with some formality, with a gateway in the south wall placed on axis with the rear entrance. Kitchen gardens to the west contain potting sheds of no special interest and more recent greenhouses. The house commands extensive views of demesne parkland to the north and toward the ruins of old Shane's Castle on the shore of Lough Neagh to the west.

The gateway comprises a pair of square sandstone ashlar piers with panelled faces, moulded plinths and cornices with swept caps, each surmounted by a large figure of a lion in what appears to be Coade stone. Vehicular gates flanked by smaller pedestrian gates, all with spear heads, are contained between them. Secondary piers of open ironwork are surmounted by cast iron coronets.