Greenmount, 205 Bangor Road, Ballygrainey, Holywood, Co Down, BT18 0JG

Greenmount is a Grade B1 listed building comprising an asymmetrical two-storey house with attic, set on an elevated site overlooking Bangor Road in Craigavad townland, County Down.

The building originated as a simple early nineteenth-century rectangular house with a central return, shown on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map as 'Greenmount Cottage'. However, it was comprehensively remodelled in the mid-Victorian period in a rather fanciful Baronial style, transforming it into the distinctive structure that survives today. The remodelling introduced crow-stepped gables, a castellated entrance tower, and a full-height slender circular turret at the north-east corner. The property is thought to have been remodelled by James Gunning of Cookstown, a partner in the linen bleaching business Gunning and Moore at Wellbrook, who leased the house from the 1850s onwards.

The rectangular house with central return has a natural slate roof with angled ridge tiles, rendered chimneystacks with moulded caps and four pots, and cast-iron rainwater goods with hopper heads. The walling is ruled-and-lined rendered over a chamfered plinth. Windows throughout are generally 1/1 horned timber sashes in plain reveals with projecting masonry sills.

The principal north-facing elevation is the most ornamental, comprising a central castellated entrance tower flanked by crow-stepped gabled side bays. The entrance comprises a six-panelled door with the top four panels raised and fielded with bolection moulding, flanked by fixed sidelights over timber aprons, all divided by simple timber pilasters. Above is a spoked segmental fanlight with panelled spandrels and decorative frieze in shallow relief. The entrance is framed by masonry piers with scrolled console brackets supporting a masonry canopy with decorative cast-iron anthemion parapet, accessed up two bull-nosed sandstone steps. Surmounting the entrance is a round-headed stained and leaded window in a moulded keyblocked surround, with a stucco cartouche above. The left bay contains two windows to each floor. The right bay is abutted by a two-storey canted bay with three windows to each floor in the traditional arrangement; the crow-stepped gables are each inset with a glazed roundel with hood mould. The turret comprises three stages delineated by plain strings, topped with a conical roof over decorative eaves moulding, with a single opening to the second stage and a series of fixed-pane openings around the third stage.

The left east gable is largely blank save for a ground-floor window set left of centre, and is extended to the rear by a tall yard wall now abutted by a modern single-storey garage. The rear south elevation is abutted by a central two-storey return, with the exposed right section having a window to each floor and the exposed left section abutted at ground floor by a single-storey castellated box bay surmounted by a first-floor window. The return is irregularly fenestrated, with some enlarged bi-partite openings and French doors, its gable abutted on axis by a lower L-shaped rubble stone outbuilding built into a bank at the rear. The right west gable has a timber door flanked by a small window, with a first-floor window to the right and two fixed-light round-headed windows at attic level.

The house is exceptionally well preserved and represents a good example of an unusual type, relating in style to the Baronial bathing villas at Marino. Ornamentation is concentrated on the principal facade, while the subservient elevations maintain a plain appearance characterised by simple proportions.

The property sits within sloping mature gardens with mature tree and hedge boundaries, lawns, and informal terraced gardens, accessed via a steep tarmac driveway from Bangor Road. The immediate curtilage is accessed through a pair of modern electric gates on stone piers with ball finials, flanked by fixed railings, with a short gravel drive leading to the house. The outbuilding to the rear has a hipped natural slate roof with cast-iron rainwater goods and modern roof lights.

Historical records show the house was valued at £7 9s by Hugh Kennedy under the Townland Valuation of 1828-40. By Griffith's Valuation in the 1856-64 period, the property had been profoundly transformed, with its valuation rising from £31 to £40, and was then occupied by George Kyle of Bridge Street, Belfast, leased from James Gunning of Cookstown. Gunning was a partner in the linen bleaching concern Gunning and Moore, who purchased Cookstown's business area in 1852; he later built the house 'Loymount' in Cookstown where he lived until his death in 1875. Greenmount may have served as a retreat for Gunning, with records indicating a family member, Henry Gunning, was resident there by 1874. By 1858 the Ordnance Survey showed outbuildings had been added to the east and south, and a gate lodge was present. The 1900-02 map shows the house further extended to the rear, by which time it was known simply as 'Greenmount'. The current owners have undertaken restoration works since circa 2005.