Cultra Manor, Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, 153 Bangor Road, Holywood, Co Down, BT18 0EU

Cultra Manor is a substantial two-storey over basement Edwardian manor house, built in 1902 to designs by the architects Graeme, Watt and Tulloch, at an eventual cost of £9,300. It stands in mature landscaped grounds within the estate of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, set on a levelled platform on the hillside off the Belfast to Bangor Road, with terraced ground below and views across Belfast Lough from the principal elevation. Mature trees screen the building on several sides, with a car park and rising wooded landscape to the rear.

The building is principally rectangular in plan, with an adjoining subservient wing to the east, car ports, and a former courtyard now filled by a modern two-storey timber infill extension added by Ian Campbell in 1963. The architectural style is robust Victorian classicism with a free Ionic treatment, as described at the time of construction in the Irish Builder of 22 May 1902, which announced the commission and noted the design as "a fine one."

The walling throughout the main house is rough-coursed basalt — the local stone recorded in valuation notes as greywacke or local limestone — with red sandstone ashlar quoins, string courses, and mouldings. The dressings are Locharbriggs sandstone. The principal building rises to a sandstone cornice at eaves level with a balustrade above. The chimneystacks are sandstone, crowned with projecting cornice details and serving multiple flues with short plain clay pots. The roof of the principal building is pitched, lead-covered, and timber-framed, with leaded finials throughout. The subservient wing has a pitched slated roof with lead ridge, valley, and hip flashing details, overhanging eaves with timber soffits, and a natural slate hipped roof with lead hips and finials to the service wing. Rainwater goods throughout are cast iron, with downpipes painted black; the subservient wing has ogee-section cast iron gutters painted white, while the principal building has concealed leaded gutters behind the sandstone cornice.

Windows throughout are single-glazed one-over-one timber sliding sashes, painted white with horns, set within sandstone heads, cills, and surrounds. Cill courses to the principal building are chamfered at ground floor and ogee-profiled at first floor level.

The principal, or garden, elevation faces northwest. To the left, the service wing is set back, with a modern upward extension over the original service yard. The north elevation of this wing features a canted bay rising over two storeys, offset to the right of centre, with windows arranged asymmetrically to either side and light-wells at basement level. The left-hand section of the main house at this elevation has one window at ground floor and two narrow windows at first floor. To the right, the main section is symmetrically arranged and dominated by a large central two-storey projecting curved bay, which forms the principal architectural feature of this elevation. The curved bay contains three windows with curved frames and glass at both ground and first floor levels, with additional horizontal sandstone banding between the two floors and a sandstone frieze detail above the first floor windows. Two further windows appear at ground and first floor to either side of the bay; the ground floor window to the left of the bay has been converted to a door.

The northeast elevation of the main house is largely abutted by the service wing. It is asymmetrically arranged with a central Palladian window over the stairwell at first floor level. To the right, a two-storey link block abuts the main house, which in turn is abutted by the two-storey L-shaped service wing. The service wing has basalt walling with red sandstone ashlar dressings and simple detailing to window surrounds. The northeast elevation of the wing is painted basalt, with a single-storey wall extending to the right and a modern timber structure over it, and various window and door openings throughout. The former courtyard, enclosed by a single-storey wall at the outer angle of the service wing, has been infilled by a 20th century timber addition.

The southeast and southwest elevations are asymmetrically arranged with a variety of window openings. The south face of the link block is abutted at ground floor by a single-storey flat-roofed projection five windows wide, with three symmetrically arranged windows at first floor above.

The south, entrance elevation of the main house is symmetrically arranged, with the central section flanked by two projecting gable ends, each with large sandstone pediments. Each gable has a canted single-storey projecting bay with a sandstone entablature and balustrade above, forming a balcony, with a pair of windows at first floor level. The central section at ground floor is asymmetrical, with the entrance offset to the right of centre. The entrance porch is formed by plain sandstone Ionic columns with an entablature over. Adjacent to the entrance is an enclosed sandstone colonnade with soffit mouldings matching the cornice details; this colonnade has three windows to the main façade and one to the porch side, and the central of the three main façade windows has been sympathetically adapted to form a door. Four symmetrically arranged windows sit at first floor level across the central section. The southwest elevation has a projecting flat-roofed two-storey box bay offset to the left of centre, with pairs of windows at ground and first floor and side windows to the bay cheeks; the ground floor window to the right side has been changed to an escape door.

The front entrance features a double-leaf door of eight chamfer-stop panels to each leaf, embraced by a sandstone ashlar Ionic portico with a full dentilled entablature and balustrade above.

The house is closely associated with Sir Robert Kennedy, a prominent figure in the British Foreign Service whose career culminated in his appointment as Ambassador to Uruguay. Kennedy retired to Cultra Manor in 1912, having built it in 1902. His family's former residence had been Cultra House, which had passed out of Kennedy ownership in the 1870s. His wife, the Honourable Bertha, Lady Kennedy, third daughter of Viscount Bangor, was described as "the outstanding Ulster adventuress of the Edwardian age and the first European woman to enter Khorassan and Afghanistan."

The house first appears by name on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1919 to 1931, on a previously vacant site. The coastal areas of Cultra had by that time been heavily developed, and building further inland allowed Kennedy to secure a large landscaped plot on which to build one of the last substantial mansions in the area — a development enabled by the arrival of the railway. The house entered the valuation records in 1904 as the property of R. J. Kennedy, valued at £220.

By 1933 the valuation had been reduced to £200, likely following an appeal. Valuers' notes from that period describe it as a "well built house of local limestone faced with Aberdeen Red Granite," occupying a fine elevated position with good views over the lough and surrounded by plantations and a glen with a waterfall. The notes also record that the carriage drive was metalled with material from an adjoining quarry which, being impregnated with sulphur, was impervious to weeds, making upkeep "approximately nil." The house had acetylene gas lighting from its own plant, a private water supply with an oil engine pump, and a septic tank with overflow to the river. A motor house is also mentioned.

Sir Robert Kennedy and Lady Kennedy died within a few months of each other in 1936, leaving four daughters to inherit the estate. After the Second World War, maintaining the manor became increasingly unmanageable and a smaller neo-Georgian house was built for the family within the grounds. The manor and pleasure gardens were sold in 1961 to the Ulster Folk Museum. A conversion was undertaken by Robert McKinstry in association with Ian Campbell, reallocating the main rooms as exhibition areas, the servants' quarters as workshops and library, and extending the garages for use as an administration block. The museum opened to visitors in 1964. At the time of the listing record being compiled, the building was undergoing a major scheme of refurbishment and restoration.