NOS Quarters, Palace Barracks, Holywood, County Down

Detached two-storey redbrick house built around 1900, located within the Palace Barracks complex at Holywood, County Down. The building is L-shaped on plan and faces west.

The house has a hipped natural slate roof with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles and a pair of large redbrick chimneystacks rising from both side elevations. Plastic rainwater goods are fitted to plastic fascia and eaves. The redbrick walling is laid in stretcher bond with a projecting brick plinth course and moulded brick sill courses. Window openings are segmental-headed with moulded brick continuous sill courses and brick aprons, now fitted with uPVC windows. The front elevation features a gable to the south with sandstone coping and kneeler stones, beneath which are paired windows to both floors. At the centre is a flat-roofed section with a pair of slender openings and a segmental-headed door opening below, now fitted with a replacement hardwood panelled door. The north side elevation is blank. The rear elevation has a corresponding gable with no openings and a flat-roofed central projection. A small rear yard is enclosed by a tall redbrick wall. The south side elevation has off-centre paired window openings to each floor. The building is set within the Palace Barracks complex fronting onto a bitumac road.

The wider barracks complex was constructed between 1894 and 1898 by various contractors and was likely designed by the War Office Architects department based in London. This particular house was built in 1898 by the contractor Fitzpatrick of Belfast at a cost of £1,089. The barracks represent a pioneering military housing scheme of the period.

From the mid-1880s the British Army had established the Kinnegar camp at Holywood as a training ground for regiments stationed in Belfast, capable of accommodating more than 400 personnel under canvas. In 1886 the Bishop's Palace at Holywood, the official residence of the Bishop of Down and Connor and Dromore, fell vacant when Bishop William Reeves succeeded to the position and took up residence in Dunmurry. Attempts to sell the Palace and grounds proved unsuccessful until 1890, when the War Office's offer of £1,000 was accepted. By 1891 the palace and grounds were being used for training by the Royal Irish Rifles and were recorded as a military barracks in valuation records. Work on officers' quarters began in 1893 and construction of the barracks commenced in 1894. By September 1896 the barracks were nearing completion and the old palace had been demolished.

The complex ultimately comprised nine blocks designed to quarter one regiment of infantry, with each block providing accommodation for 84 men and two unmarried sergeants. Additional structures included a recreation establishment with lecture-room, coffee-room, billiard-room and canteen with separate corporals' accommodation; cookhouses, baths and workshops; sergeants' mess establishment and guardhouses near the site of the central lodge of the old palace; a commanding officer's quarters at the south-west angle of the grounds; officers' quarters accommodating twenty-seven officers with mess establishment; a hospital with adjoining medical officer's residence; and quartermaster's and warrant officers' quarters. Further blocks for married men's accommodation were erected at the north end of the grounds along Jackson's Road. The buildings were lit throughout with gas supplied by the Holywood Gas Company Limited, with water supplied by the Belfast Water Commissioners. A 1907 parliamentary debate noted the importance of making barracks in Ireland as attractive as possible to improve recruitment, which was significantly more difficult in Ireland than elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

The house has lost much of its original fabric and is of modest architectural interest, though the barracks site itself is of interest as a purpose-built military complex of relatively late date and as an example of developments in housing military personnel.