9 Clandeboye Cottages, Belfast Road, Clandeboye, Bangor, Co Down, BT19 1RJ

Number 9 Clandeboye Cottages is a one-and-a-half-storey, single-bay, mid-terrace Victorian workers' cottage built around 1855, one of a terrace of thirteen erected for the Clandeboye Estate on the north side of the main Belfast to Bangor Road, directly opposite the entrance to the estate. The terrace is a good example of this type of estate workers' housing and one of only a few such terraces surviving in the province. It retains significance both architecturally and historically through its association with the Clandeboye Estate and the Dufferin family.

Architectural Description

The cottage has a pitched natural slate roof with intermediate bands of fish-scale courses and a clay ridge tile. The chimney has been replaced in red brick. Cast-iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout, comprising half-circle gutters and circular downpipes, with a uPVC soil vent pipe to the rear. The walls are smooth rendered with a projecting plinth and corbel course. The ground floor windows have chamfered flush cills with moulded sandstone surrounds and mullions; the first-floor windows have plain chamfered surrounds and cills. All windows are replacement timber side-hung single-glazed casements. The front door is set in a Tudor-arched opening with moulded surrounds and a fixed light over.

The principal elevation faces west and is asymmetrically arranged, with the front door to the right. To the left is a tripartite ground-floor window with painted mullions and surrounds but no horizontal timber glazing bars. Above the ground-floor window is a wall-head dormer containing a double-glazed bipartite window with horizontal glazing bars.

The rear elevation is principally symmetrically arranged, built in red brick in English garden wall bond. A modern rear door is centrally positioned, flanked by camber-headed arched sash windows with stone cills at both ground and first floor. The ground-floor right window and the first-floor window are original two-over-two sliding sashes.

The left elevation abuts number 10 Clandeboye Cottages and the right elevation abuts number 8 Clandeboye Cottages.

Setting and Outbuildings

There is a garden to the front and a yard to the rear. The rear yard contains terraced outbuildings in red brick with slated pitched roofs, comprising an external toilet and a storage building. Rear access is via a timber ledge-and-braced solid gate. To the west of the site is open rural landscape; to the south is a busy dual carriageway; modern housing development lies to the north and east.

Historical Background and Dating

The terrace presents a dating puzzle. A datestone on the south facade of the terrace bears the date 1867, yet the terrace appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, nine years earlier. The datestone is not in its original position — a first survey photograph from 1973 clearly shows a window where the datestone now sits, and first survey records confirm it was found detached and lying in a back yard at that time. It is unclear whether the datestone originated with this building or was brought from elsewhere on the estate. Although it is possible the terrace was added to the map after the survey date, this practice was generally confined to railway lines and related structures and did not normally apply to houses beyond the immediate railway curtilage.

The terrace does not appear separately in Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, though this is not conclusive evidence that it did not yet exist, since estate buildings were often included within the overall valuation of an estate without being individually identified. When the buildings first appear in Annual Revisions in 1866 they are listed as vacant, which may indicate they had only recently been completed internally. A construction date in the mid-1850s best reconciles the conflicting evidence and is consistent with field inspection of the terrace.

The architect is unknown, but both Benjamin Ferrey and William Henry Lynn were working with Lord Dufferin during the 1850s and 1860s and are therefore possible candidates.

The terrace stands on the northern edge of what was then the Clandeboye Estate. To the north is a shelter belt of trees known as the 'Walmer Screen' and to the east a wooded area called 'Walmer Grove' — Walmer being the name of a Cinque Port of which Lord Dufferin served as Warden. Correspondence between Lord Dufferin and Mortimer Thomson dating from 1869, concerning the allocation of estate cottages, may relate to these buildings.

Annual Revisions from 1866 record the dwellings as initially vacant, with numerous subsequent changes of occupier and occasional periods of vacancy, consistent with their use as estate workers' cottages. All dwellings were leased from Lord Dufferin and Clandeboye and valued at £3 10s. In 1874 this valuation was raised to £4, suggesting improvements were made to the properties at that time.

The terrace is captioned 'Red Cottages' on the 1901 Ordnance Survey map, a reference to an original brick frontage. According to the estate office, the terrace was always known locally as 'Red Row'; the now-rendered dwellings are currently known as 'Clandeboye Cottages'. Each house originally had a front garden and a small plot at the rear for growing vegetables. The cottages were originally designed with an open porch area, but the front doors were brought forward to enclose this space prior to the first listing survey in 1973. A row of sheds running behind the cottages is shown on the 1858 Ordnance Survey map and is therefore contemporary with the cottages themselves.

In 1985 extensive repairs and improvements were carried out, including replacement of internal doors and frames, replacement of floorboards, removal of kitchen units and walls, rebuilding of chimneys, and connection of the houses to sewers and electricity, along with replacement of front and back doors. Gas heating has since been introduced and copper pipework is visible to the rear elevations.

Although the cottage has been modernised — with alterations that detract somewhat from its original character — its historic detailing survives and contributes to the group value and interest of the terrace as a whole. The cottages remain in the ownership of the Clandeboye Estate and are still, in many cases, the homes of estate workers or their descendants, giving a remarkable continuity of use from the time they were first built.