112 Ballywalter Road, Millisle, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT22 2HS

112 Ballywalter Road, Millisle — Ballyrolly Townland

These two Edwardian semi-detached houses, dating from approximately 1900 to 1919, stand at the end of a lane near the junction of Ballywalter Road and Woburn Road, about one mile south of Millisle. They form a two-storey gabled block and are accompanied by a long range of single-storey stables at the rear. Although the houses have lost some historic fabric and detailing, they remain substantially intact. The buildings are currently vacant and recorded as derelict.

Architectural Description

The front north-east facade features a doorway left of centre with a timber sheeted door, plain fanlight, and a moulded surround with keystone. To the right of the door is a window retaining the remains of a sash frame with horizontal and vertical glazing bars; the window to the left of the door is now covered with a metal sheet. At first-floor level, a gabled half-dormer with decorative bargeboards and a finial contains twin sash windows set on a shared cill, with semicircular arched heads and horizontal glazing bars. The right-hand side of the facade mirrors this arrangement. The south-east gable is blank. The north-west gable has a metal multi-pane window to the right at ground-floor level.

Prior to a June 2014 inspection, a single-storey gabled return at the centre of the rear elevation was shared between both houses. Both the south-east and north-west facades of this return had a sheeted door and window matching those on the ground-floor front. The return was attached to a large outbuilding. To either side of where the return joined the main block, the rear facade of the main building had two first-floor and two ground-floor sash windows, matching the ground-floor front windows. This return has since been demolished, and there is now an open doorway to the hall with exposed brick, stone, and plaster visible on the rear wall of the house.

The external walls are finished in lined render. The roof is pitched and covered with Bangor blue slates, with three predominantly rendered chimney stacks.

Adjacent to the houses, and set at right angles, is a long run of rendered stables with a hipped slated roof, three cast-iron rooflights, and segmental-headed doors with steel horse doors.

Setting

The houses and stables sit in a rural setting on the perimeter of Millisle. A late 20th-century house and modern agricultural outbuildings detract from the original setting.

Historical Background

Ordnance Survey maps of 1833/34 and 1858–60 record a building on this site. The Dunbar estate map of 1797 also indicates houses on this general site, at that time in the possession of Reverend Andrew Greer, the first minister of the nearby Millisle Presbyterian Church. On that same map the site is shown approached by a notably formal tree-lined lane. The name "Ballyrolly House" suggests a building of some age and former local importance. One secondary source has proposed that a house stood on the site for more than a century before 1797 and was once owned by a member of the locally prominent Montgomery family. However, the two houses now standing appear entirely Edwardian in character, suggesting that any earlier buildings were demolished before the present ones were constructed.

In 1933, the then-owner of the property, Lawrence Gorman, leased it along with its farm to members of the Belfast Jewish community. Between 1938 and 1947, the farm became the site of a refugee settlement of profound historical significance.

The Kindertransport Connection

The primary historical importance of this property lies in its direct association with the Kindertransport — the informal name for a series of organised rescue operations that brought thousands of Jewish refugee children to the United Kingdom from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940. The programme was initiated in the aftermath of Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) on 9–10 November 1938, when the Nazi authorities staged a violent pogrom against Jews across Germany. In response, the British government eased immigration restrictions for certain categories of Jewish refugees.

Driven by British public opinion and the persistent efforts of refugee aid committees — most notably the British Committee for the Jews of Germany and the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany — British authorities agreed to permit an unspecified number of children under the age of 17 to enter Great Britain from Germany and German-annexed territories, including Austria and the Czech lands. Private citizens or organisations were required to guarantee the cost of each child's care, education, and eventual emigration from Britain. In return, the British government allowed unaccompanied refugee children to enter on temporary travel visas, with the understanding that when the crisis had passed the children would return to their families. Parents or guardians could not accompany them, and the few infants included in the programme were cared for by older children during transit.

The first Kindertransport arrived at Harwich on 2 December 1938, bringing approximately 200 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin that had been destroyed during Kristallnacht. Most transports departed by train from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and other major cities in Central Europe, with children from smaller towns and villages travelling to these collection points to join them. Jewish organisations within the Greater German Reich — specifically the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany (and after early 1939, its successor the Reich Association of Jews in Germany), as well as the Jewish Community Organisation in Vienna — planned the transports, generally prioritising children whose emigration was most urgent: those whose parents were in concentration camps or were no longer able to support them, as well as homeless children and orphans.

Children travelled by train to ports in Belgium and the Netherlands, from where they sailed to Harwich. At least one early transport left from the port of Hamburg, and some children from Czechoslovakia were flown directly to Britain. The last transport from Germany departed on 1 September 1939, the day the Second World War began, while the last transport from the Netherlands left on 14 May 1940, the day the Dutch army surrendered to German forces. In all, the rescue operation brought approximately 9,000 to 10,000 children — some 7,500 of them Jewish — from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to Great Britain.

On arrival at Harwich, children with sponsors proceeded to London to meet their foster families. Those without sponsors were housed in a summer camp at Dovercourt Bay and other facilities until individual families agreed to take them in, or until hostels could be organised for larger groups. Approximately half the children lived with foster families; the remainder stayed in hostels, schools, or on farms throughout the United Kingdom. Jews, Quakers, and Christians of many denominations worked together in the rescue operation. In 1940, British authorities interned approximately 1,000 children from the programme as enemy aliens, sending them to the Isle of Man and to internment camps in Canada and Australia. Despite this classification, some of the boys later joined the British army and fought against Germany. After the war, many Kindertransport children became British citizens or emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Most would never see their parents again; the majority were murdered during the Holocaust.

The Farm at Millisle

This particular farm at Millisle housed more than 100 refugees of all ages between 1939 and 1947. Initially established in June 1939 as a holiday location for refugee children gathered in Belfast, it had beforehand served as a training farm where young Jewish people from Europe were taught agricultural skills — practical knowledge that was considered essential preparation for resettlement. A Hungarian farm manager named Herr Patriasz oversaw the agricultural training programme, under which young trainees, known as chalutzim, rotated through different areas of farm work including cereal crops, root crops (particularly potatoes), kitchen gardening, dairy farming, and chicken farming.

After September 1939, when it became impossible for families to leave Europe, the refugees' stay at the farm became permanent. Refugees initially slept in large tents, and subsequently in converted stables and the farmhouse itself. A year later, a large wooden hut was constructed, containing dormitories, a synagogue, and entertainment and play rooms. This wooden structure was dismantled in 1947 when the farm was disbanded. As the farm also took in refugees of all ages, the training programme for girls was expanded to include nursery, health, laundry, and kitchen work.

From 1940 onwards, refugee children attended the public elementary school in Millisle, where Mr Palmer taught all classes together in one large room and Mrs Mawhinney looked after the infant class. Under the direction of a Mr Mündheim, the chalutzim constructed a byre from home-made reinforced concrete bricks, described as likely being the strongest byre in Ireland. Members of the Belfast Jewish community visited every Sunday, bringing clothing and presents. Occasional trips were made to the cinema in Donaghadee.

When the farm was disbanded in 1947, most of the young workers emigrated to Israel, where they applied their agricultural training to cultivating farmland. Some refugees remained in Northern Ireland after the war ended.

A memoir written by Gerald Jayson (born Gert Jacobowitz), a refugee who lived at the farm and later studied at Queen's University Belfast, records his experiences in detail. He and his sister Edith had been brought to England from Berlin via the Kindertransport after both their parents were arrested. His parents, along with most of his uncles, aunts, and cousins, were subsequently murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz. He attributes his arrival in Northern Ireland specifically to the intervention of Mrs Wolf, the sister of a Turkish businesswoman who had traded with his father in Berlin, who appealed to the Jewish Committee on their behalf at a time when the Committee was primarily assisting Jews from Nazi-annexed Austria. His account describes daily life on the farm, seasonal agricultural work including haymaking and potato picking, encounters with Jewish officers and soldiers from the American army passing through Northern Ireland en route to the D-Day landings, and his gradual integration into Northern Irish life.

The current owner has stated that only the stables were used as accommodation for the refugees, though the memoir account and other historical evidence suggest that the converted stables and the farmhouse itself also served this purpose.

These surviving buildings — the two Edwardian houses and the stables range — represent a tangible and rare physical link to this episode of European history, and to the significant role that Millisle played in sheltering Jewish refugees who would otherwise have faced deportation to Nazi concentration camps.