Home farm, Ballywalter Park, Ballyatwood Road, Springvale, Ballywalter, Newtownards, Co Down, BT22 2PP

Home Farm, Ballywalter Park

This extensive complex of mid to late nineteenth-century farm buildings serves the Ballywalter Park estate, situated south of Ballyatwood Road about a mile south of Ballywalter. The grouping includes many twentieth-century additions, but the architecturally more interesting section lies to the north.

The older section consists of a large square courtyard bounded by rubble-built structures with portions in red and yellow brick. The north edge features a line of single-storey gabled storerooms with largely featureless elevations, Bangor Blue slate pitched roofs, and small wooden hipped roof ventilation turrets positioned at regular intervals. At the centre of this north side stands a two-storey house, probably once the farm manager's quarters and now farm offices. Its north facade, finished in red brick with yellow brick dressings to the openings, displays only ground floor windows, an overhang to the pitched roof, and sash windows set in arched recesses. The aesthetic is that of a late nineteenth-century railway office. The courtyard-facing south elevation of this house is rendered.

The east and west sides of the courtyard contain single-storey animal houses with rendered courtyard walls. The east side incorporates the main entrance to the courtyard: a segmental headed archway set within a gable on the east facade.

The south side of the courtyard contains perhaps the most interesting section of the entire grouping—a two-storey rubble building with a central gabled bay in red brick with yellow brick to wall edges and openings on its north facade. This central bay features a large segmental coach arch leading out of the courtyard and a semicircular headed window opening above it containing a Georgian paned sash window. A clock sits above the window, with a bracketed roof overhang to the gable and a decorative open bell cote, possibly of cast iron and copper, crowning the roof ridge. The remainder of this side has various but largely regular window and door openings with red brick dressings; some openings contain sash frames while others are louvred. Two doorways immediately to the right of the central gabled bay retain remains of machinery at their heads—three large iron wheels on an axle bolted to the wall. This apparatus appears to have been part of a belt-driven mechanism powered by a traction engine to deliver rotational force to internal machinery. The south facade of the building on the south side of the courtyard features brick steps to the left leading to the upper level, with a large modern corrugated iron shelter attached to the right-hand (east) side.

The complex of buildings south of the main courtyard is partially obscured by modern farm-type extensions, though sections of rubble-built structures remain visible, particularly on the east side.

Associated with the complex are three residential buildings. On the east side of the road leading north from the main entrance stands a neat single-storey rubble-built house ('House 1'), possibly constructed during the 1890s, with sandstone courses to its walls and to window and door openings. Two further Edwardian houses are positioned to the south ('House No. 2') and north ('House No. 3') of the complex.