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

3 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 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, on a steeply sloping site.

The roof is pitched natural slate with intermediate bands of fish-scale courses and clay ridge tiles. The chimney has been rebuilt in replacement red brick. Rainwater goods are cast iron, with half-circle gutters and circular downpipes; there is a uPVC soil and vent pipe to the rear. The walls are smooth rendered with a projecting plinth and corbel course.

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

The rear elevation is principally symmetrically arranged and built in red brick in English garden wall bond. A replacement timber sheeted rear door is centrally placed, flanked on both sides by camber-headed arched sash windows at both ground floor and first floor levels. The left elevation abuts number 4 Clandeboye Cottages, and the right elevation abuts number 2A Clandeboye Cottages.

To the front is a garden on the steeply sloping site. 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 shared with the adjoining owner. The immediate surroundings include rural landscape to the west, a busy dual carriageway to the south, and modern housing development to the north and east.

The listing covers the house itself together with its walls and outbuilding.

The date of this terrace has been a subject of some complexity. A datestone bearing the year 1867 is visible on the south facade of the terrace, but this is not in its original position and its origin is uncertain. A survey photograph taken before 1973 clearly shows a window where the datestone now sits, and records from 1973 note that the datestone was at that time detached and lying in the back yard of one of the cottages. The terrace appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, nine years before the 1867 date, suggesting the stone may have come from another structure elsewhere on the estate. The terrace is not listed separately in Griffith's Valuation of 1856 to 1864, though this is not conclusive, as estate buildings were often absorbed into the overall estate valuation rather than itemised individually. When the cottages first appear in the Annual Revisions in 1866, all dwellings are recorded as vacant, possibly indicating they had only recently been completed internally. A construction date in the mid-1850s best reconciles the conflicting evidence and is consistent with a physical inspection of the terrace.

The architect is unknown, but both Benjamin Ferrey and William Henry Lynn were working with Lord Dufferin during the 1850s and 1860s and are therefore considered possible candidates.

The terrace is referred to as 'Red Cottages' on the 1901 Ordnance Survey map, a reference to an original brick frontage. The estate office records that the terrace was always known internally as 'Red Row'; the now-rendered cottages are currently known as Clandeboye Cottages. Each cottage originally had a front garden and a small plot to the rear for growing vegetables. The row of outbuilding sheds running behind the terrace is shown on the 1858 map and is therefore contemporary with the cottages themselves.

The terrace sits on the northern edge of what was 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'. Both names refer to Walmer, 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.

In the Annual Revisions from 1866, all dwellings are leased from Lord Dufferin and Clandeboye and valued at £3 10 shillings each. In 1874 this valuation was raised to £4, suggesting improvements were made to the properties at that time. In 1985 extensive repairs and improvements were carried out, 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 occupied by estate workers or their descendants, giving a remarkable continuity of use from the time they were first built. The terrace as a whole is a good example of this type of estate workers' housing and one of only a few such terraces surviving in the Province. Number 3 contributes to the group value and character of the terrace, despite the modernisation it has undergone.