Carrowdore Castle, Abbey Road, Ballyrawer [ near Carrowdore], Millisle, Newtownards, Co Down, BT22 2JH

Carrowdore Castle is a large but relatively compact three-storey country house built in 1818 in a castellated rustic Gothic style. The complex comprises outbuildings including a matching three-storey tower, a ruinous gazebo, stables, and former servants' dwellings. The house sits on a slight rise within partly wooded grounds at the north-east edge of the small village of Carrowdore.

The main house is basically square in plan with a projecting tower to the north-west. It is constructed in rubble with red brick dressings, corner turrets and parapets, and an open porch in sandstone. The roof is largely hipped with Bangor blue slates and the building has a deep set basement.

At the corners of the front (north-east) and south-east facades are turrets which are square and constructed in rubble to the basement and ground floor level, but octagonal and constructed in brick above. There are two central additional turrets to the front elevation. At ground floor level on the turrets are Cross of Lorraine recesses with brick dressings, regular cross recesses to the first floor and slit recesses to the second floor.

The front entrance is positioned centrally on the north-east facade and consists of a large modern timber door with glazed panels of various shapes including quatrefoils and pointed arches. The door sits within a large pointed arch opening with an intricately glazed fanlight and sidelights, with a simple moulded surround. Over the doorway is an open sandstone porch with pointed arch openings, buttressed piers, castellated parapet and pyramidal pinnacles, approached via steps.

To the right on the north-west facade is a large round projecting tower with a shorter square two-storey projection to the south-west featuring a rubble-built castellated parapet. A high rubble wall extends from this projection to join a three-storey rubble-built gatehouse tower to the south.

The rear of the main house has been rendered. It features a central full-height gabled bay containing the stairwell. To the ground floor of this bay and extending across most of the left-hand side is a very large single-storey flat-roofed timber conservatory and sun room, largely semicircular in plan and completely glazed. To its right is a smaller curved conservatory. These extensions are of recent origin, the larger dating from the early to mid-1970s and the smaller probably from the 1980s.

The windows throughout the main house are generally sash with Georgian panes, with openings decreasing in size on the upper storeys. The front facade has four windows to the upper floors with one to each side of the porch. The south-east facade has three windows to all floors, with that to the left on the ground floor now a door. The north-west facade has two windows to each floor, with three to each floor of the large round tower projection. The second-floor windows on the tower are the largest and have pointed arch heads, with one window on this level partly blocked. The shorter projection to the south-west of the tower has a window to each floor. Window openings to the rear are less regular. To the first landing level on the rear gabled stairwell projection is a tall pointed arch window with three lights and decorative tracery and stained glass. The basement level has a variety of openings, some now blocked. There is a cill course to the second-floor openings on the front, south-east and north-west facades. The chimneys are rendered. Cast iron rainwater goods are present.

At the south end of the yard to the rear of the main house is a three-storey gabled gatehouse tower. It is rubble and brick built, square in plan, and while of the same general rusticated style as the house, has a slightly Jacobean character. The ground floor gateway runs east to west through a large pointed arch with brick dressings. Above this arch on both east and west faces is a small pointed arch window, a roundel recess above this, and a smaller pointed arch window to the uppermost floor. The west face has square narrow castellated turrets at each side and a bellcote to the gable apex. A small plaque on this face reads "Delacherois Crommelin 1690", though this does not appear to refer to the vintage of the tower. Attached to the south face of the tower is a long two-storey rubble-built gabled block of former servants' rooms and stores, now modernised and appearing as holiday homes. Opposite this block to the east is a block of stables. The north face of the tower shows traces of a fireplace and other openings, suggesting a building was once attached here. The tower was once finished in rough cast render, much of which has now fallen away.

A short distance east of the main house, at the end of a high rubble wall, stands a now ruinous rubble-built gazebo of roughly 3.5 metres square and three storeys in height. It has the remains of a gabled roof set behind a castellated parapet and openings at all levels, now devoid of window frames or doors. An external stone stair against the south side of the boundary wall rises to a first-floor doorway on the east face. Remains of timber floors are visible inside. This small building is now in very poor order and partly overgrown with vegetation.