Barn by Kirkistown Castle, Kirkistown Castle, Main Road, Kirkistown, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT22 1JA

Barn by Kirkistown Castle

This largely restored two-storey rubble-built barn stands at the south-east corner of Kirkistown Castle's bawn. It has been converted to a visitor centre with toilets on the ground floor and currently serves as a site office and store for tools and equipment.

The barn is gabled, with its main north-east facade featuring two plain timber-sheeted doors. To the left of the left-hand door is a small window opening, currently boarded. A small extension with a mono-pitched roof is attached to the wall to the right of the right-hand door. The first floor has two small sliding sash and case windows with horizontal astragals. Evidence of structural remedial work is visible on the north-east facade in the form of three metal plates. The north-east gable is entered at first floor level via stone steps leading to a plain timber-sheeted door. The south-west gable and south-east elevation, which forms part of the actual bawn wall, are both blank. The pitched roof has stone parapets and four cast iron skylights in the north-east elevation.

The building appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1834 and may have been built in the early nineteenth century, possibly during William Montgomery's attempted renovation of Kirkistown Castle. Alternatively, it could date from the early eighteenth century, when Lucy McGill, the then owner, resided in "the good dwelling house" built within the bawn, or even from around 1670, when Captain James McGill was improving the lands around the castle. The 1966 Archaeological Survey of County Down classified the barn as "recent and modern" (post-1800), providing no further detail. Recent renovation works have been undertaken, and the barn is currently in use as a site office and store for the builders restoring the castle.