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

5 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 dwellings erected for the Clandeboye Estate. It sits on the north side of the main Belfast to Bangor Road, directly opposite the entrance to the Clandeboye Estate.

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

The principal elevation faces west and is asymmetrically arranged. The front door is positioned to the left, with a tripartite ground-floor window to the right featuring painted mullions and surrounds and horizontal timber glazing bars. Above the ground-floor window is a wall-head dormer containing a bipartite window with horizontal glazing bars. The left elevation is abutted by the adjoining cottage to the north (number 6), and the right elevation by the adjoining cottage to the south (number 4).

The rear elevation is largely symmetrically arranged, built in red brick in English garden wall bond. A replacement timber rear door is centrally located, flanked on each side by camber-headed arched sash windows with stone cills at both ground and first floor levels.

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

The date of construction has presented researchers with something of a puzzle. A datestone bearing the year 1867 is visible on the south facade of the terrace, yet the terrace clearly 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 taken before 1973 shows a window where the datestone now sits, and first-survey records confirm that in 1973 the datestone was detached and lying in a back yard. It is therefore considered likely that the datestone originated from another structure on the estate rather than from this terrace. The terrace does not appear in Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, though this is not conclusive, as estate buildings were frequently included within the overall valuation of an estate without being individually identified. When the cottages first appear in the Annual Revisions in 1866, all the dwellings are listed as vacant, which may indicate they were newly completed internally at that point. On balance, a construction date in the mid-1850s best reconciles the conflicting evidence and is consistent with a physical inspection of the terrace.

The terrace of thirteen dwellings, together with outbuildings to the rear and a reading room, stood on the northern edge of the Clandeboye Estate as it then was. To the north lies a shelter belt of trees known as the Walmer Screen, and to the east a wooded area called Walmer Grove — both named after Walmer, a Cinque Port of which Lord Dufferin served as Warden. Correspondence from 1869 between Lord Dufferin and Mortimer Thomson concerning the allocation of estate cottages may relate to these dwellings. The Annual Revisions record numerous changes of occupier and occasional periods of vacancy from 1866 onwards, consistent with use as estate workers' housing. All dwellings were leased from Lord Dufferin and Clandeboye and were valued at £3 10s, a valuation raised to £4 in 1874, suggesting some improvements were made to the properties at that time.

The architect responsible for the design is unknown, though both Benjamin Ferrey and William Henry Lynn were working with Lord Dufferin during the 1850s and 1860s and are therefore considered possible candidates. The Ordnance Survey map of 1901 captions the row as "Red Cottages", a reference to an original brick frontage; however, according to the estate office the terrace was always known as "Red Row", and the now-rendered dwellings currently go by the name of Clandeboye Cottages. Each house originally had a front garden and a small plot to 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 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 replacing internal doors and frames, replacing floorboards, removing kitchen units and internal walls, taking down and rebuilding chimneys, connecting the houses to sewers and electricity, and replacing front and back doors. Since that time gas heating has been introduced, and copper pipework is visible to the rear elevations.

The cottages remain in the ownership of the Clandeboye Estate and continue in many cases to be the homes of estate workers or their descendants, providing a remarkable continuity of use from the time they were first built. The listing covers the house, its walls, and the outbuilding.