Farm Buildings, Portaferry House Demesne, Ballymurphy, Portaferry, Co Down

These farm buildings form an extensive and impressive complex of mainly pre-1820 construction, built to serve the Portaferry House demesne. They are located to the rear (north-west) of Portaferry House, roughly half a mile north of the town of Portaferry, and are now used mainly as stores and dwelling houses. The complex is arranged around two courtyards in a roughly figure-of-eight plan, accessed via a gateway in a high stone wall to the south.

The western courtyard is the farmyard proper, consisting of a varied U-shaped grouping of single and two-storey buildings originally built as milking parlours, dairies, piggeries, fowl houses and similar agricultural structures. The eastern courtyard is a former stableyard arranged around a smaller yard, surrounded by a more uniform U-shaped two-storey rendered block which originally contained the stables, quarters for the hands, a tack room, carriage houses, laundries and similar accommodation. At a distance to the north of both yards stands a former threshing mill, with the dilapidated remains of a horsewalk.

The former stableyard to the east is bounded on the south by the high stone wall mentioned above, against which there is a notable early petrol pump. The east side is formed by a two-storey rendered building recently converted to living accommodation, which may originally have housed stable hands' quarters. The north side is a slightly taller two-storey rendered general farm building, and the west side is another similar structure; both of these latter two buildings probably mainly housed hay lofts above stables and carriage houses at ground-floor level. A coach arch leads through the eastern building of the stableyard to a walled lane which continues to the rear of Portaferry House; this walled lane also encloses a small garden to the rear of the eastern building. The windows throughout the stableyard buildings are generally sash with Georgian panes, and the doors are set within elliptical arch openings with painted smooth render dressings. A large carriage doorway on the inner façade of the eastern building is now largely filled with glazing, and a former pedestrian doorway beside it has been blocked. The upper level of the western stableyard building is reached via a stone stair from the farmyard to the west.

The inner façades of the stableyard buildings, facing into the yard itself, are finished in unpainted roughcast, while the exposed outer façades are in unrendered rubble with brick dressings to the openings. The roofs are a mixture of gabled and hipped forms, all covered in natural slate. The dwelling block on the east side has two yellow brick chimney stacks, with a further stack to the northern block, which was at the time of survey being re-slated with window frames to the outer façade undergoing repair. At the north-east outer corner of the stableyard block there is a now-disused smithy with a lean-to roof and an open porch, the roof of which is supported on harled columns.

The farmyard to the west covers a larger area than the stableyard and displays less uniformity. Its eastern boundary is formed by a large single-storey building with a lean-to roof resting against the west side of the two-storey stableyard building; this appears to have been a milking parlour and retains its stalls, with the names of the cows still marked above them. To the north is a long, low two-storey block with a series of open elliptical archways, the two central of which lead through to the north side of the building. Above these two central archways is a large gabled half-dormer containing a loft doorway. The west side of this courtyard is bounded by another two-storey building, and to the south-east an L-shaped grouping of single and two-storey structures almost creates an additional smaller courtyard in that corner. All the buildings in the farmyard have whitewashed stone inner façades with some brick dressings to the openings, and the roofs are mainly gabled and covered in natural slate. At the time of survey the farmyard buildings were largely disused.

To the north are the remains of the single-storey threshing mill and horsewalk. The horsewalk is rubble-built with a part-gabled, part-conical slated roof and an elliptical arched opening in the south side. Attached to its west side is a long, low hipped-roof building with small doorway openings to the north. To the north of this is a tall single-storey gable building with a large doorway on the west side fitted with modern sliding timber doors, and to the east is a longer building of similar height which further east connects to a modern corrugated iron-clad barn. Apart from the horsewalk itself, this northern grouping remains in use. The horsewalk is in poor condition and part of its roof has collapsed.

The farmyard and stableyard complex is shown on the first-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834 largely as it appears today. The 1838 valuation returns confirm that the two-storey stableyard buildings were already present at that date and contained stables and laundries, while the farmyard comprised two two-storey cow houses, a two-storey cattle shed, a car house and loft, and various single-storey structures including a potato house, a cattle shed on pillars, a fowl house, a slaughter house, a carpenter's shop and a smithy, with a barn and the threshing mill to the north. The valuers noted that, apart from the threshing mill, most of the structures were not new at that date, indicating that they were built in the later 18th century or very early 19th century. The complex also has group value with the other listed buildings within the demesne.