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

7 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 cottages 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, in the townland of Ballyleidy.

The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with intermediate bands of fish-scale courses and clay ridge tiles. The chimney serving this cottage is a replacement in red brick, shared with the adjoining property at number 8 and including a faux replacement stack. 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 external walls are smooth rendered with a projecting plinth and corbel course — a finish that replaced what was originally a brick frontage, the terrace having once been known as "Red Row" and captioned "Red Cottages" on the 1901 Ordnance Survey map.

The principal elevation faces west and is asymmetrically arranged. The front door sits to the left in a Tudor-arched opening with moulded surrounds and a fixed light above. The ground floor window to the right is tripartite, with painted mullions and moulded sandstone surrounds, chamfered flush cills, and horizontal timber glazing bars. Above this window, a wall-head dormer contains a bipartite window with horizontal glazing bars. The windows throughout are replacement timber side-hung single-glazed casements; ground-floor openings retain their moulded sandstone surrounds and mullions, while first-floor openings have plain chamfered surrounds and cills. The cottages were originally designed with an open porch, but this was enclosed by bringing the front doors forward prior to the first heritage survey in 1973.

The rear elevation is principally symmetrically arranged, built in red brick in English garden wall bond. A timber rear door is centrally positioned, flanked on each side by camber-headed arched sash windows with stone cills at both ground and first floor levels, though the view of the rear is obscured. The left elevation abuts number 8 Clandeboye Cottages and the right elevation abuts number 6.

To the front is a garden. To the rear is a yard with terraced outbuildings in red brick with slated pitched roofs, comprising an external toilet and storage; rear access is via a timber ledge-and-braced solid gate. To the west the setting is rural landscape; to the south lies a busy dual carriageway; and modern housing development sits to the north and east. A row of sheds running behind the cottages appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 and is therefore contemporary with the cottages themselves.

The date of construction has been the subject of some research. The terrace bears a datestone inscribed 1867, but this conflicts with its appearance on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, nine years earlier. The datestone is not in its original position — first survey photographs clearly show a window where the datestone now sits on the south facade, and 1973 survey records note it was then detached and lying in a back yard. It is considered likely that the datestone originated from another structure on the estate rather than from this terrace. The terrace does not appear separately in Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, but this is not conclusive, as estate buildings were often subsumed within the overall valuation of an estate. When the cottages first appear in the Annual Revisions in 1866 they are recorded as vacant, which may indicate they were newly completed internally at that point. A construction date in the mid-1850s best reconciles the conflicting evidence and is consistent with physical inspection of the buildings.

Each dwelling was initially valued at £3 10s. and leased from Lord Dufferin and Clandeboye. In 1874 the valuation was raised to £4, suggesting improvements were made to the properties at that time. Correspondence between Lord Dufferin and Mortimer Thomson dating from 1869 concerning the allocation of estate cottages may relate to these buildings. The architect is unknown, but both Benjamin Ferrey and William Henry Lynn were working with Lord Dufferin during the 1850s and 1860s and are considered possible candidates. The terrace takes its name from Walmer, a Cinque Port of which Lord Dufferin was warden — the wooded shelter belt to the north is known as the Walmer Screen and the wooded area to the east as Walmer Grove. Each cottage originally had a front garden and a small plot at the rear for growing vegetables.

In 1985 extensive repairs and improvements were carried out across the terrace, including replacing internal doors and frames, replacing floorboards, removing kitchen units and walls, taking down and rebuilding chimneys, connecting the houses to sewers and electricity, and replacing front and back doors. Since then 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 are in many cases still the homes of estate workers or their descendants, providing a remarkable continuity of use from the time they were first built. As a mid-terrace unit, this cottage contributes directly to the group value of the complete terrace of thirteen, which is a good surviving example of Victorian estate workers' housing and one of only a few such terraces remaining in the province.