Nunsquarter House, 108 Shore Road, Nuns Quarter, Kircubbin, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT22 2RP

Nunsquarter House is a substantial gentleman's residence of approximately 1840–50, situated half a mile north of the village of Kircubbin on Shore Road. The building stands slightly back from the road and represents a major reconstruction of an earlier complex that occupied the site.

The main section is a two-storey building with a hipped roof finished in Bangor blue slates with lead ridges. Two central corbelled and rendered chimney stacks, each with four octagonal pots, rise from the roof. The house has three principal extensions: a single-storey hipped roof dining room to the north; a long narrow gabled greenhouse to the south, set on a low rendered base; and a large two-storey return to the rear (west), which probably incorporates fabric from an earlier, possibly 18th-century dwelling.

The east-facing main elevation is formally composed. The central entrance features a recessed door screen with an elliptical fanlight resting on an entablature supported by two Ionic columns. The timber-panelled door and sidelights are flanked by outsized console brackets. A small balcony with a decorated cast iron balustrade (as recorded in 1971) sits between the fanlight and the window above. The first floor has a tripartite sashed window with Georgian panes, set between plain stone pilasters and mullions beneath a stone entablature and blocking course. Flanking the door are projecting square symmetrical bays with moulded quoins and base course, each containing two equally-spaced sashed windows with vertical astragals to the ground floor and two similar windows with Georgian panes to the first floor.

The single-storey northern extension has two equally-spaced sashed windows with vertical astragals and blank north and west elevations. A tall yellow brick chimney stack with one pot rises from the eaves. The southern elevation of the main house contains one sashed window with Georgian panes on the first floor, with evidence of a second, now blocked, window to the right. The south facade of the main house also features a single-storey gabled greenhouse on a rendered base.

The rear return is a large two-storey structure, possibly a former coach house and perhaps originally the principal dwelling. Its north side has been substantially patched with concrete breeze block. The south facade has three sashed windows on the ground floor and a stable door between the first and second windows, now leading to a pottery workshop. To the right is a small lean-to porch extension with a stable door and narrower sashed window. The first floor of the return mirrors the ground floor fenestration. The west gable features a large multi-pane oriel window with a hipped roof at first-floor level. The north elevation has a sashed window on the ground floor to the left and an unusual three-sided bay on the first floor containing four modern fixed-light windows set on a cill course. Two small gothic windows at different levels are visible on the far left of the rear elevation. The return is finished in lined render with quoins, plain render to the north facade, and Bangor blue slates to its gabled roof. Cast iron rainwater goods are present throughout.

The rear yard is paved. To the south are outbuildings including a small weighbridge and brick-built control house with hipped roof and internal weighing equipment, probably built in the early 1900s. To the north is a raised, wedge-shaped platform enclosed with a gate and iron railings, with a large cast iron tank at the narrow end, suggesting the whole apparatus may have functioned as a sheep dip. A covered well lies to the north of the house.

Ordnance Survey maps of 1834 show a U-shaped building marked as Nunsquarter House, with a long narrow wing running east to west where the present return now stands, and adjoining wings to the west and south. By the 1860 revised map, the present main house had been constructed with much of the earlier U-shaped section still standing to its rear, though without the present north extension and greenhouse. The main house therefore dates to between approximately 1835 and 1860, most likely 1840–50, with the northern and southern extensions probably added in the late Victorian or Edwardian period. The wings to the south and west of the original 1834 plan, possibly originally stables, were demolished recently, reducing the building to its present T-shaped form. The awkward internal layout reveals something of the building's architectural evolution.

Some fabric from the original house may survive within the rear return walls and conceivably within the northern section of the main house, but the present structure bears little resemblance to the complex that stood in circa 1834. The original house was likely 18th-century and may have been built by the locally prominent Allen family, who appear to have held the property throughout most of the 19th and 20th centuries. Documentary evidence, including testamentary papers of Margaret Allen of Nunsquarter from 1787, may relate to the original dwelling.