Mount Stewart School, Portaferry Road, Mount Stewart, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT22 2RU

Mount Stewart School

This long, mainly single-storey schoolhouse was built in 1813, with substantial late 19th and early 20th-century additions in a somewhat Ornamental style. The building now functions as a dwelling house and artist's studio.

The school was commissioned by Viscountess Castlereagh and originally served as a charity school under the Erasmus Smith foundation. Records from the 1830s describe it as a "neat schoolhouse" with an attendance of around 45 pupils, both male and female. The building closed in the 1920s. During the Second World War it was repurposed as a canteen for soldiers billeted at Mount Stewart, and in the post-war years operated as tea rooms. It is now the property of the National Trust.

The original 1813 structure was a simple rectangular building, as shown on Ordnance Survey maps of 1834 and circa 1860. Most of what is visible today—including the porch, extensions, fleche and two-storey gabled section—dates from the late 19th or early 20th century.

The building's main form comprises long, single-storey sections with hipped roofs, topped by slated coverings. The single-storey roof ends feature lead-clad triangular dormers with metal finials. The central two-storey gabled section has slated roofing. A timber-framed fleche rises from the roof ridge behind the entrance porch, topped with a tall square pyramidal roof clad in lead and finished with a metal finial. Chimney stacks are rendered with corbelling: two to the two-storey section, two to the south-east of the main roof, and one to the north-west.

The south-west front elevation is asymmetrical. An open decorative timber-framed gabled porch with Bangor blue slate roof and metal finial dominates the left-centre section. Within the porch sits a double-panelled and glazed door set within an equilateral arched opening, leading to the artist's studio. To the left of the porch are two equilateral arch window openings with casement windows, also serving the studio. To the right are two matching but more widely spaced windows. A timber-sheeted door with triangular fanlight—the main house entrance—stands to the right, with the two-storey gable rising above it and featuring decorative barges. The main roof overhang continues across the front of the gable. Above the door and left-hand window are paired sliding sash-and-case windows with triangular heads and a circular commemorative plaque beneath the sill. To the right of the house doorway are five similar windows. The north-west elevation is blank.

The north-east elevation features a plain timber-sheeted door with rectangular fanlight. To its left is an equilateral arched window opening matching those on the front. A small flat-roofed entrance porch with modern window and door sits immediately to the left. Beyond this is a large hipped-roof return with a window to its north-west side and two to the north-east. The south-east face of the return has a plain timber-sheeted door with equilateral arched fanlight. This single-storey extension adjoins a two-storey gabled projection with two ground-floor windows and one first-floor window to its north-west facade, all matching the style of the front elevation. The gable features shaped barges. To the left of this projection is an equilateral arch window opening; to its left is a second hipped-roof section, identical to the one at the far right but handed. Further left is a timber-panelled and glazed door with two arched windows matching those elsewhere. The south-west gable face is blank.

The building is located approximately three miles north-west of Greyabbey on the inland (north-east) side of the Portaferry Road.