Former railway watch house, 44 Newtownards Road, Ballyhenry Minor, Comber, Co Down, BT23 5LB

Former Railway Watch House, Newtownards Road, Ballyhenry Minor, Comber

A small single-storey railway crossing keeper's cottage, built circa 1848–50 on the north side of Newtownards Road, less than half a mile east of Comber town centre. This building is now demolished.

The cottage was constructed as one of a series of small dwellings built adjacent to level crossings on the Belfast and County Down Railway line between Newtownards and Donaghadee. The crossing keeper who lived here performed the mid-nineteenth-century human equivalent of modern automatic level crossing safety gates. The building was marked on the 1859 Ordnance Survey map as a "Railway watch house". The Belfast and County Down Railway line between Newtownards and Comber closed in 1950.

The building was a small gabled cottage with a gabled entrance porch on the southwest gable. The porch featured a timber-panelled entrance door and a small sash window with Georgian panes and drip moulding. The main porch section had a Bangor blue slate roof with large overhang, decorative barges and finial. A small lean-to portion was attached to the northwest face of the porch, with a small sash window to the northwest face. The main southeast façade included a canted bay on the left with a hipped roof and sash windows to each face. To the right of the bay was a slightly larger sash window with drip moulding. The northeast gable was blank. The rear had two sash windows without drip moulding. The entire façade was finished in lined render and painted. The roof was Bangor blue slate with overhang, decorative barges, finials and dog's tooth ridge tiles. A central rendered chimney stack with original-looking octagonal pots was present. An original coal shed and dry closet stood next to the northeast gable.

The cottage retained largely untouched internal detailing despite minor changes, making it a rare surviving example of its type. Decorative barge boards and finials were possibly added at the end of the nineteenth century. The building was occupied until recently by the last crossing keeper to live in the house but was subsequently vacant before demolition.