Buildings at former quarry site, Castle Espie Wetlands & Wildfowl Trust Conservation Centre, 78 Ballydrain Road, Castle Espie, Comber, Co. Down, BT23 6EA

The former quarry site at Castle Espie is situated on the coast of Strangford Lough to the E of the Ballydrain Road, 2 miles SE of Comber. Much of the N and W of the site, centred around the former Quarry Farm, is now a dedicated conservation area for wildfowl with the former quarry pits now fresh water ponds and the whole area landscaped and now heavily wooded. The Quarry Farm buildings (just E of the Ballydrain Road) now serve as a visitor centre, coffee shop etc. A large, recently constructed, two storey building (which has been built generally in the style of a traditional farm house with Georgian paned sash windows etc.), to the W side of the farmyard, contains offices. This building stands on the site of the original single storey farm house. A single storey outbuilding (to the N side of the yard) is now a shop and has been extended and completely modernised internally. The S and E of the former quarry site has not (in the main) been landscaped. Most of the structures associated with the quarry and the brickworks have been demolished, however a few remnants remain. The most prominent of these is the long narrow pier which stretches finger-like into the Lough and is now largely overgrown and uncared for. Apparently the very end of the pier used to stretch further but a timber section was removed in fairly recent times. To the S of the pier there are remnants of former tennis courts (now largely overgrown) and a runway for light aircraft. Both of these were constructed in the late 1960s, with the former lime and brick kilns and a terrace former quarry workers’ houses (known as ‘The Red Row’) demolished in the process. To the S of the runway, however, there is a fairly large, rectangular shaped ‘courtyard’ area with high walls of rubble and brick. Inside the yard, on the inner sides of the walls, are the remains of small lean to structures (?once used as stores or workshops). The main entrance to the yard on the N side has an adjacent section of walling (to the W) which was apparently once a small bell tower but whose remains are now covered in thick plant growth. A short distance to the W of the ‘courtyard’ is a small octagonal former pump house in brick. This is now largely smothered in thick plant growth and has several small openings to several of its sides. These openings are crudely formed and are probably not original. A tall narrow opening to the N side does appear to be original, however. It is now partly filled with a perspex ‘window’. Within the former pump house the Wetland Trust has placed a cone shaped ‘time capsule’.