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

Home farm at Ballywalter Park is an extensive complex of mid to late nineteenth-century farm buildings with numerous twentieth-century additions, built to serve the Ballywalter Park estate. The farm lies to the south of Ballyatwood Road, a short distance below Ballywalter Park itself, roughly a mile south of the village of Ballywalter.

The architecturally significant section occupies the northern part of the complex. A large square courtyard is bounded by buildings largely constructed in rubble with sections in red and yellow brick. Along the north edge runs a line of single-storey gabled storerooms with minimal architectural detail, topped with Bangor Blue slate pitched roofs and small wooden hipped roof ventilation turrets at regular intervals. At the centre of this north side stands a two-storey house, probably formerly the farm manager's quarters and now used as farm offices. Its north facade is rendered in red brick with yellow brick dressings to the window openings, features sash windows set in arched recesses, and has an overhang to the pitched roof, giving it the aesthetic of a late nineteenth-century railway office. The courtyard-facing south facade of this house is finished in render. Single-storey animal houses occupy the east and west sides of the courtyard, with rendered courtyard walls. The east side contains the main entrance: a segmental-headed archway set in a gable on the east facade.

The south side of the courtyard contains the most architecturally interesting section—a two-storey rubble building with a central gabled bay in red brick and yellow brick to the wall edges and openings on the north facade. This gabled bay contains a large segmental coach arch leading out of the courtyard, with a semicircular-headed window opening above featuring a Georgian paned sash window. Above the window is a clock, with a bracketed roof overhang to the gable and a decorative open bell cote (possibly of cast iron and copper) set to the ridge. The rest of this south elevation contains various largely regular window and door openings with red brick dressings; some windows retain sash frames while others are louvred. Two doorways immediately to the right of the central gabled bay have remains of machinery at the doorway heads—three large iron wheels on an axle bolted to the wall—which formed part of a belt-driven mechanism probably powered by a traction engine to deliver power to machinery within the building. This element is of industrial archaeological interest. The south facade of the south-side building 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 to the south of the main courtyard is partially obscured by modern farm extensions, though sections of rubble-built structures can still be glimpsed, particularly on the east side. On the east side of the road leading from the north to the main entrance stands a neat single-storey rubble-built house (House 1), probably erected in the 1890s, with sandstone courses to its window and door openings. Additional Edwardian houses stand to the south of the complex (House No.2) and to the north (House No.3).

The farm complex largely dates from the latter half of the nineteenth century and was built by the Mulholland family, owners of Ballywalter Park. The northern courtyard is shown on the Ordnance Survey map of around 1860. The listing extends to the original courtyard to the north.