Crawford House, Old Windmill Road, Crawfordsburn, Co Down, BT18 1XL

Crawford House, Old Windmill Road, Crawfordsburn

Crawford House is a substantial former country house built in the Scots Baronial style, dating from 1904–6 and designed by architect Vincent Craig. It stands in a shore-side setting on the east side of Crawfordsburn Country Park, overlooking Belfast Lough, to the east of Crawfordsburn village. The house was built at an estimated cost of £20,000 as a replacement residence for the Crawford family, and has since served as a private home, a tuberculosis authority property, a geriatric hospital, and is now converted into apartments. Despite this history of change and the addition of a large modern extension, the original character of the building largely survives.

Architectural Description

The house is rectangular in plan, four bays wide and two storeys tall with attic accommodation. It is built from uncoursed, squared, rock-faced Scrabo sandstone with a plain plinth, and dressed with honey-coloured sandstone. The roof is pitched natural Westmoreland slate with angled clay ridge tiles. Chimneystacks are ashlar sandstone with moulded caps and multiple pots. The roofline is animated by a variety of gables and gabled dormers, with raised roll-topped saddleback skewputts (fractables) and double-gableted ends. Rainwater goods are ogee-profile cast iron fixed to an ashlar eaves cornice on the principal elevations, with half-round guttering over exposed rafter tails to secondary elevations. Downpipes have box hoppers secured with dated plate fixings stamped 1906. Windows are generally one-over-one horned timber sashes with chamfered ashlar surrounds, reduced in scale at attic level. Doors are generally modern timber replacements.

West (Entrance) Elevation

The west elevation is asymmetrically arranged across four bays. Windows are mostly singly or in pairs, with exceptions including a triple window to the ground floor right and a bowed bay with parapet also containing three windows. The second bay from the left is wider than the others, projects slightly forward, and is fronted by a single-storey porch with a notable neo-Baroque portico. This portico comprises two Composite columns with pilaster responds to either side of the entrance, carrying a scrolled pedimented entablature. The pediment is ornamented with an ornate carved coat of arms bearing the inscription 'Durum / Patentia / Franco', above a blocking course. The entrance door opening is segmental-headed with impost mouldings and a moulded stone head with carved keyblock. The door itself is a modern six-panelled replacement, flanked by reconditioned stained glass sidelights, and approached by three granite steps with swept side walls. The porch cheeks each have a round-headed window flanked by pilasters with a Classical surround. At first floor level in this bay, windows are corbelled out above recessed ground floor openings. The attic gable carries a datestone reading A.D. 1906.

North (Shore-Facing) Elevation

The north elevation is three bays wide and nearly symmetrical, with gabled left and right bays. The central bay has three openings per floor, including a door at centre with a tall transom light surmounted by a carved stone monogrammed plaque. The right bay has a bowed bay to the ground floor. The left bay is dominated by a full-height canted Baronial-style mullioned-and-transomed window with leaded and stained glazing — sixteen panes to the main face and three to each cant and cheek — surmounted by a parapet with a carved stone panel.

East Elevation

The east elevation has a projecting bay set to the extreme left and another to the right of centre. At the internal angle between these two bays, at ground floor level, is a single-storey quadrant bay lit by equally spaced windows. This quadrant bay is surmounted by a carved panel, and the wall above supports a tall chimneystack fronted by a blank gable. The main section of this elevation has a series of smaller windows to ground and first floor, and a door accessed by four stone steps with ramped side walls. Modern dormers are present on this side. Other openings are irregularly arranged.

South Elevation

The south elevation is partially obscured above ground floor level by the modern apartment wing. The elevation is broadly L-shaped in form, consisting of a substantial ancillary projecting wing to the right — opening onto an entry at ground floor and abutting the extension at upper floors — and the main block to the left. There are two canted bays to the ground floor and the characteristic irregular arrangement of gables, along with a modern dormer.

Interior

The building has been subdivided for apartment use, with some loss of internal detailing. Historical records give a clear picture of the original interior arrangement. In 1933, the ground floor comprised an outer hall and porch, lounge hall, six reception rooms, two cloakrooms with WC and lavatory basins, a safe room, butler's pantry, butler's room and safe, brushing room, WC and cloaks, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, storeroom, flower room, kitchen, scullery, larder, boots and WC, dairy, wood stores and coal hole. The first floor contained a boudoir, minstrels' gallery, ten principal bedrooms, three bathrooms, three WCs, a housemaids' pantry, linen room and sewing room. The second floor had eight principal bedrooms, six maids' rooms, three bathrooms and two WCs. The basement held a wine cellar, store and safe. The house had central heating, its own acetylene gas lighting plant, a water supply pumped from wells to a service tank, and drainage to a septic tank.

Historical Context

The house was designed by Vincent Craig and built between 1904 and 1906 for Colonel Robert Gordon Sharman Crawford, replacing an earlier house of around 1820 situated to the west of the current building, which had itself replaced a house of around 1780. The Irish Builder of 19 November 1904 invited tenders for the erection of a new house for 'Colonel Sharman Crawford D.L.', noting that it would 'do away with the rather historic, if excessively ugly old mansion on the shores, at the entrance of Belfast Lough'. The earlier house of around 1820 appears on the first and second edition Ordnance Survey maps and is recorded in both the Townland Valuation of 1828–40 and Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 as the property of the Crawford family. The new house was listed in the Annual Revisions of 1908 at a valuation of £380, rising from the former building's £70; following an appeal in 1909 this was reduced to £350. The new house appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1919–31.

Colonel Robert Gordon Sharman Crawford was an army officer and politician who served as Member of Parliament for East Belfast from 1914 to 1918 and for Mid Down from 1921 to 1922, and on the Senate of Northern Ireland from 1921 until his death in 1934.

A valuer's report of 1933 describes the building as a 'well built modern mansion occupying attractive site on shore of Lough', noting extensive lawns, ornamental gardens, a walled kitchen garden, conservatories, garages, carriage and coach house, stabling for hunters, and good general condition throughout. The report observed that the house and offices were 'somewhat larger than required by the occupier'. A contemporary estate agent's leaflet described the house as having a thoroughly modern interior with nine reception rooms, twenty-five bedrooms and seven bathrooms, and suggested possible uses as a private residence, a country club, a hotel or the central headquarters for a holiday camp.

Valuer's notes from 1935 record the house being let after Crawford's death to W. J. Stewart — likely William John Stewart, Member of Parliament for South Belfast from 1929 to 1946 and head of the building firm Stewart and Partners, which had built the Parliament Buildings at Stormont in 1932. Crawford's representatives were reportedly obliged to spend over £1,250 on improvements before the house could be let, including the installation of electric lighting and additional bathrooms with improved fittings. It was speculated at the time that the house was to be let until the heir came of age.

The house was sold in 1948 to the Northern Ireland Tuberculosis Authority, at which point a nurses' home, recreation room and school room were added to the site. In 1959 the Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority took over, using the building as a geriatric hospital. In the early 1980s it passed into private ownership, and in 2000 was redeveloped to designs by MacRae Hanlon Spence Partnership, converting the original building into 38 apartments with an additional 22 apartments in a new courtyard development to the south east.

Setting

The house occupies a shore-side setting overlooking Belfast Lough, surrounded on other aspects by the mature planted landscape of Crawfordsburn Country Park. To the east is an expanse of lawn terraced down to the northern boundary, which is hedge-lined. To the west is a tarmac car park, beyond which a development of new houses has been built. A tarmac drive sweeps down from Windmill Lane through a pair of security gates on modern brick piers. The modern extension block, built in imitation of aspects of the original house, occupies the south-east portion of the site. A walled garden to the west is now closed off from the main grounds and in separate ownership. The building has group value with its two gate lodges: Burn Lodge on Crawfordsburn Road, and 20 Bridge Road South, Helens Bay.