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

Number 1 Clandeboye Cottages is a one-and-a-half storey, single-bay, end-of-terrace Victorian workers' cottage built around 1855, situated on the north side of the main Belfast to Bangor road, directly opposite the entrance to the Clandeboye Estate. It is the first of a continuous terrace of thirteen such cottages erected for the Clandeboye Estate, and the listing covers the house itself together with its boundary walls and outbuilding.

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

The principal, south-facing elevation is asymmetrically arranged. The front door is positioned to the left. To the right is a tripartite ground-floor window with painted mullions and surrounds and horizontal timber glazing bars. Directly above this window is a wall-head dormer containing a bipartite window with horizontal glazing bars. The left-hand elevation adjoins number 2 Clandeboye Cottages. The gabled right-hand elevation is blank.

The rear elevation is broadly symmetrically arranged and is faced in red brick in English garden wall bond, rendered at ground-floor level. A replacement rear door sits centrally, flanked by two single-pane casement windows with stone cills. At first-floor level there are camber-headed arch sash windows, though the view of these is partly obscured by an abutting plastic canopy. The cottages were originally designed with an open porch area, but prior to listing in 1973 the front doors were brought forward to enclose this space.

The setting includes a steeply sloping front garden and a rear yard enclosed with translucent corrugated plastic sheeting. Behind the terrace stands a row of red-brick outbuildings with slated pitched roofs, comprising an external toilet and storage facilities. These outbuildings are shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 and are therefore contemporary with the cottages themselves. Rear access is via a timber ledge-and-braced solid gate leading to an alleyway shared with the adjoining property. To the west the landscape is rural; to the south is a busy dual carriageway; and to the north and east there is modern housing development.

The date of construction has been the subject of considerable research. A datestone bearing the year 1867 is currently visible on the south façade of the terrace, but this is not in its original position. Early survey records from 1973 show a window in the location where the datestone now sits, and at that time the stone was recorded as detached and lying in a back yard. The terrace appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, nine years before the date on the stone, suggesting the datestone may have originated from another structure on the estate rather than from these cottages. The terrace does not appear separately 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 buildings first appear in the Annual Revisions in 1866, all the dwellings are recorded as vacant, which may indicate they had only recently been completed internally. A construction date in the mid-1850s best reconciles the conflicting evidence and is consistent with the findings of field inspection.

The architect is not known with certainty. Both Benjamin Ferrey and William Henry Lynn were working with Lord Dufferin during the 1850s and 1860s and are considered possible candidates.

The terrace sits on the northern edge of what was formerly the Clandeboye Estate. To the north is a shelter belt of trees known as the Walmer Screen, and to the east is a wooded area called Walmer Grove. The name Walmer is a reference to 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 buildings. All the dwellings were leased from Lord Dufferin and Clandeboye and were originally valued at £3 10s, rising to £4 in 1874, suggesting improvements were made to the properties at that time. The Annual Revisions record numerous changes of occupier and occasional periods of vacancy over the years, consistent with use as estate workers' cottages.

The terrace was originally known as Red Row, a name reflecting what was originally an exposed brick frontage. By 1901 the Ordnance Survey map captions the buildings as the Red Cottages. The facades have since been rendered and the terrace is now known as Clandeboye Cottages. Each cottage was originally provided with a front garden and a small rear plot for growing vegetables.

In 1985 extensive repairs and improvements were carried out, including replacement of internal doors and frames, replacement of floorboards, removal of kitchen units and walls, taking down and rebuilding chimneys, connection to sewers and electricity, and replacement of front and back doors. Gas heating has since been introduced and copper pipework is visible at the rear elevations.

The cottages remain in the ownership of the Clandeboye Estate. In many cases they continue to be the homes of estate workers or their descendants, representing a remarkable continuity of use from the time they were first built.