Glen Cottage, 43 Bangor Road, Groomsport, Co Down, BT19 6JF

Glen Cottage is an evolved, asymmetrical one-and-a-half storey, four-bay house built around 1830, extended around 1850, and remodelled around 1880. It stands on the west side of Bangor Road, Groomsport, at the southern end of the Glenganagh estate, and is included within that estate group. The house retains a large proportion of its original fabric and its immediate setting survives largely intact.

The building is rectangular in plan with a return to the east. The roof is pitched natural slate with angled clay ridge tiles and plainly detailed cement-rendered chimneystacks — five to the main ridge and one to the return. Rainwater goods are cast iron, carried over exposed rafter tails and a corbel course. The gables have plain timber bargeboards. All external walling is roughcast rendered throughout.

Windows are timber sashes with contrasting frames, plain reveals, and projecting painted masonry cills. They are generally in a 6/1 configuration, with a 2/2 (horizontally divided) configuration to the larger ground floor windows. Doors are painted sheeted timber with cast-iron door furniture.

The principal elevation faces west, overlooking the beach. Attic windows are set into the gables of all bays except the one at the far right. Reading from left to right, the bays are detailed as follows: the first has two windows to the ground floor and one above; the second has a large margin-paned window to the ground floor and one above; the third is a full-height canted bay with three 2/2 sashes in the traditional arrangement and a single window above; the fourth, rightmost bay is vernacular in character and is likely to be the earliest surviving part of the house, containing a single ground floor window. The left gable is otherwise blank, with the exception of a modern timber door opening to a makeshift shed.

The rear elevation is abutted by a return with a catslide extension to the north, which contains the main entrance. The exposed right bay of the rear elevation has a door with a three-light transom; the exposed left bay has a single window. The return has a catslide porch to the south containing the main entrance, with a window to its right. The east elevation has a door with a transom light and the remains of a cast-iron bootscraper, above which is a round-headed 1/1 sash window, with a further window to the right side. The north elevation has a small high-level window beneath the eaves. The right gable has an attic window.

The house is set in wooded surroundings, close to but well screened from Bangor Road to the east. There is a lawned garden to the front, bounded by a rubble stone wall, circumnavigated by a grass and earth driveway leading to parking spaces at the north-west of the house. A natural wooded bank leads down to Ballyholme beach to the west. The main Glenganagh house is set to the north.

A smaller building appears on the footprint of Glen Cottage on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, with a small detached outbuilding to the north-east. By the second edition of 1858, the building had been extended northwards to occupy its current footprint, with an additional L-shaped outbuilding appearing to the north-east. The house as it stands today is of late 19th century appearance but clearly evolved from a pre-1833 dwelling, the remains of which are evident in the southern part of the house and in the reconfiguration of the entrance. The survival and development of this original plan form is of particular interest.

Griffith's Valuation of 1856 records the occupier as Alexander Perry, leasing from Lord Dufferin and Clandeboye. The estate itself, recorded as 'Glenganagh' on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, is assessed by architectural historian C.E.B. Brett as probably at least fifteen years older than that date, perhaps more. It appears in the Townland Valuation of 1828 to 1840 as the residence of Lady Dufferin, valued with its offices at £25 6s. Lady Dufferin was Anna Dorothea, daughter of John Foster, Lord Oriel, and widow of Sir James Blackwood, who had inherited the Dufferin and Clandeboye estates in 1808. She is thought to have moved into Glenganagh shortly after his death in 1836 and lived there until her death in 1865 at the age of 93. She was a noted gardener, and Lord Dufferin's rent books record an expenditure of £31 7s 9d on her garden in 1865 to 1866.

In 1880 the estate passed to Samuel Kingan, of whom W.G. Lyttle wrote in 1885 that he "has expended vast sums in ornamenting and beautifying the place, since he became the proprietor of the townlands of Ballyholme and Ballycormick. The vineries, fernery &c are constructed and heated on the most improved principles." The current appearance and fabric of Glen Cottage dates from this period of large-scale improvements to the Glenganagh estate. Samuel Kingan was a successful businessman who, along with his brothers Thomas and John, had opened a meat-packing plant in Belfast in 1845. The firm prospered selling pork products to the British Navy, and in 1851 and 1853 they opened plants in Brooklyn, New York and Cincinnati, Ohio respectively. After both plants burned down, a third was opened in Indianapolis in 1862. In 1875 the firm merged with another Belfast firm, J & T Sinclair. Many of their workers were Irish and some were recruited in Ireland. An 1893 advertisement in the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis records 'Kingan & Co, Pork Packers' with their factory in that city. On Samuel Kingan's death in 1911 the estate passed to his sons William and Thomas. Annual Revision records show a large rise in the property's valuation following this, to £110 in 1916.