Poultry Cottages, 20 - 22 Shane's Castle Park, Antrim, Co Antrim

Poultry Cottages, 20-22 Shane's Castle Park, Antrim

This is an unusual piece of estate architecture with impressive formal massing and a prominent position within the grounds of Shane's Castle, a large country house estate. The building has group value with other listed structures on the estate.

The terrace comprises three houses arranged in a distinctive composition: a central two-storey gabled house symmetrically flanked on each side by lower two-storey gabled wings, with single-storey end blocks beyond. Each lower wing and its adjoining end block form a separate dwelling. Main entrances face south.

The construction uses basalt rubble walls with flat arches to the openings. Roofs are laid in Bangor blue slates in regular courses. The gables are overhanging with decorative pierced wooden barge boards displaying a wavy line to the bottom rail. Cast iron gutters and downpipes serve the roofs, and cut stone chimneys with plain block cornices rise from the ridge lines.

On the entrance elevation, the main central block is five windows wide to the first floor. These are modern rectangular PVC windows with horizontally arranged bars, set in raised smooth cement rendered reveals with projecting concrete cills. The central entrance comprises a rectangular timber panelled door with metal framed sidelights set within a segmental relieving arch. The flanking two-storey blocks have rectangular metal windows—fixed lights, casements and top-hung vents with horizontal glazing bars—and projecting stone and concrete cills. Glazed and sheeted timber doors serve these blocks. The end blocks contain similar metal windows and sheeted doors, with gables of each end block containing a sheeted timber door.

The rear elevation mirrors the front in stonework and slated roofing. The main central block is three windows wide to the first floor with modern PVC replacements. The ground floor is asymmetrical, containing a central doorway with a rectangular timber panelled door set below a segmental relieving arch, windows similar to those above, and two rectangular sheeted doors to the right-hand side. The flanking two-storey blocks display varied window arrangements: some are original rectangular timber sliding sashes with 1 over 1 glazing, some with horns and some without; others are later replacements comprising timber fixed lights with top-hung vents, including a large picture window. The end blocks have blank rear walls but contain later metal ventilators inserted.

The terrace stands in a rural setting within the grounds of the estate, approached by a tarmac lane off the main estate road through a pair of stone gate piers without gates. Detached single-storey rendered garages stand at each end of the terrace. Large fields extend to the front and rear.

Built by the O'Neill family as farm workers' houses on the Shane's Castle estate, the precise date of construction is not known, but the building appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1858, suggesting construction between 1840 and 1859.