8 Clandeboye Cottages, Belfast Road, Clandeboye, Bangor, Co Down, BT19 1RJ

Number 8 Clandeboye Cottages is a one-and-a-half-storey, single-bay, mid-terrace Victorian workers' cottage built around 1855, one of a terrace of thirteen erected for the Clandeboye Estate on the north side of the main Belfast to Bangor Road, directly opposite the entrance to the estate. It is a good example of this type of estate workers' housing and one of only a few such terraces surviving in the Province. The terrace retains strong historical associations with the Clandeboye Estate and its connections to the Dufferin family.

The principal (west-facing) elevation is asymmetrically arranged, with the front door positioned to the right and a tripartite ground-floor window to the left. The window has painted mullions and surrounds with horizontal timber glazing bars, and a wall-head dormer sits above it, containing a bipartite window also with horizontal glazing bars. The front door sits in a Tudor-arched opening with moulded surrounds and a fixed light over.

The roof is pitched natural slate with intermediate bands of fish-scale courses and clay ridge tiles. The chimney is a replacement in red brick. Cast-iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout, comprising half-circle gutters and circular downpipes, with a uPVC soil and vent pipe to the rear. The walls are smooth-rendered with a projecting plinth and corbel course. Windows are replacement timber side-hung single-glazed casements; the ground-floor openings have chamfered flush cills with moulded sandstone surrounds and mullions, while the first-floor openings have plain chamfered surrounds and cills.

The rear elevation is principally symmetrically arranged and finished in red brick laid in English garden bond. A rear timber-sheeted door is centrally positioned, flanked by camber-headed arched sash windows at both ground- and first-floor level. The first-floor right-hand window retains its original two-over-two sliding sash. The left elevation abuts number 9 Clandeboye Cottages and the right elevation abuts number 7.

To the front is a garden. To the rear is a yard with terraced red-brick outbuildings under pitched slate roofs, comprising an external toilet and storage. Rear access is via a timber ledge-and-braced solid gate. To the west lies open rural landscape; to the south is a busy dual carriageway; modern housing development lies to the north and east.

The date of construction has been the subject of some historical complexity. The terrace bears a datestone inscribed 1867 on its south façade, yet it appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, nine years earlier. The datestone is not in its original position — a first survey photograph clearly shows a window where the datestone now sits, and first survey records from 1973 note that the stone was at that time detached and lying in the back yard of one of the houses. It therefore seems likely that the datestone originated elsewhere on the estate rather than with this terrace. The terrace does not appear in Griffith's Valuation (1856–64), though this is not conclusive, as estate buildings were frequently subsumed within the overall valuation of an estate without being separately identified. When the buildings first appear in the Annual Revisions in 1866 they are listed as vacant, which may suggest they were newly completed internally at that time. A construction date in the mid-1850s best reconciles the conflicting evidence and is consistent with field inspection of the terrace.

The terrace, which includes thirteen dwellings, outbuildings to the rear, and a reading room, was situated on the northern edge of the then-Clandeboye Estate. To the north lies a shelter belt of trees known as the Walmer Screen, and to the east a wooded area called Walmer Grove — both names referencing Walmer, a Cinque Port of which Lord Dufferin served as Warden.

Correspondence from 1869 between Lord Dufferin and Mortimer Thomson concerning the allocation of estate cottages may relate to these buildings. Annual Revisions from 1866 onwards record the dwellings as leased from Lord Dufferin and Clandeboye, initially all vacant, with numerous changes of occupier and occasional periods of vacancy consistent with use as estate workers' cottages. Each dwelling was valued at £3 10 shillings, rising to £4 in 1874, indicating some improvements to the properties at that time.

The architect is unknown, though Benjamin Ferrey and William Henry Lynn were both working with Lord Dufferin during the 1850s and 1860s and are considered possible candidates. The 1901 Ordnance Survey map captions the row as "Red Cottages," a reference to an original brick frontage, though the estate has always known the terrace as "Red Row." The now-rendered dwellings are currently known as Clandeboye Cottages. Each house was originally provided with a front garden and a small plot to the rear for growing vegetables. The cottages were originally designed with an open porch, which was subsequently enclosed by bringing the front doors forward; this change had already been made prior to listing in 1973. The row of sheds running behind the cottages appears on the 1858 Ordnance Survey map and is therefore contemporary with the cottages themselves.

In 1985 extensive repairs and improvements were carried out, including replacing internal doors and frames, replacing floorboards, removing kitchen units and internal walls, taking down and rebuilding chimneys, connecting the houses to sewers and electricity, and replacing front and back doors. Gas heating has since been introduced and copper pipework is visible to the rear elevations.

Although modernised, the cottage retains its original detailing, which is integral to the group value and interest of the terrace as a whole. The cottages remain in the ownership of the Clandeboye Estate and are still, in many cases, the homes of estate workers or their descendants, representing a remarkable continuity of use from the time they were first built.