3 Kearney Village, Kearney Road, Kearney, Portaferry, Co Down, BT22 1QP

3 Kearney Village is a long single-storey vernacular house of probable mid-19th century construction, situated on the north-east side of Kearney Village. Evidence from Ordnance Survey maps suggests the building was erected between 1834 and 1860, with a structure matching the present house clearly shown on the 1860 map. The house features a small projecting gabled extension to the rear, originally built around 1960 as a garage.

The front south-east facade is asymmetrical, with a timber stable door to the right and three unevenly spaced sash windows to the left, with a single similar window to the right. The south-west elevation contains a window to the left of the main house gable, while the side of the flush gabled extension is blank. The north-east gable is blank but features a central projecting external chimney breast. The rear elevation contains a glazed back door and window within a small timber conservatory, with two windows to the right and one to the left, with two similar windows serving the gable of the return. The entire house is finished in rough-cast render. The gabled roof is covered with Bangor blue slates and features stone parapets with three rendered chimney stacks. Cast-iron gutters and down spouts serve the building. A low rendered wall encloses the front garden.

Kearney Village itself has a substantial medieval and early modern history. In early medieval times the townland was held by the McKearneys, a family possibly distantly related to the O'Neills of Tyrone. During the later medieval period it passed to the Gaelicised Norman Savage family, who leased much land to the Smiths. A 1643 lease references the mill, mill ponds and watercourses as lucrative assets. By the later 17th century the Savages had leased Kearney to the Ross family of Rosstrevor, who held it throughout the 18th century. A lease of March 1729 provides the first evidence of substantial settlement at the village site. Settlement expanded throughout the remainder of the century, with residents employed on local farms and at two nearby flax and corn mills, supplementing their incomes through salvaging shipwrecks and possibly smuggling. The village likely reached peak population and activity in the 1830s, when it contained 33 families, two schools (one Church of Ireland and Catholic, the other Presbyterian), and a ceilidh house. The 1836 valuation records only three single-storey houses, occupied by Hugh and John McNabb and Widow Hasty, who owned the nearby windmill.

Decline began in the latter half of the 19th century; by 1900 the population had halved as residents moved to towns or emigrated. By 1938 most Kearney farms and cottages had passed to Hugh Orr, who established a model farm nearby. By 1945 only three houses were occupied by seven residents in total. The National Trust acquired the village around 1965 using Enterprise Neptune campaign funds, at which point it was nearly abandoned. Since 1965 the Trust has restored and reconstructed Kearney based on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map layout, when the settlement had probably reached its height. Most houses are now occupied as permanent residences or holiday homes, all leased from the Trust.