Brooklands Manse, 20 Brooklands Road, Ballycullen, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT23 4TL

Brooklands Manse was a large two-storey house built around 1850 in Ballycullen, on the western side of Newtownards. The house was demolished around 1980, likely to make way for a modern dual carriageway that was constructed over the route of the former railway line.

The house was built in Scrabo stone ashlar with V-jointed pointing. The eastern front, which faced the railway embankment, featured five first-floor and four ground-floor double-hung sash windows with horizontal astragals. A square single-storey central porch with twin pilaster quoins, a frieze lintel, cornice and blocking course dominated the entrance, with a three-light fixed sash window beneath a segmental arch and a panelled apron. Doorways opened on both sides of the porch, with panelled and glazed doors set in wood architraves. The roof was hipped and slate-covered, with dressed stone chimneys. The eaves featured a cornice and frieze, with bevel quoins at the corners, an F-floor band course and a level base. The gabled end walls were built in rough-dressed Scrabo stone with ashlar dressings.

A two-storey stone coach house stood at the western end of a yard enclosed by stone walls. This building had a slate roof with gable ends and displayed two first-floor double-hung windows with Georgian panes and dressed raised surrounds. A first-floor sheeted door with the same surround was accessed by an open staircase from the left side. The ground floor contained a central coachway with an elliptic arch head and two smaller elliptic arch doors, all with sheeted doors and raised V-jointed surrounds.

The entrance to the coach yard featured an elliptic arch gateway with a raised vermiculated surround and sheeted gates.

Brooklands was originally built for an official of the Belfast & County Down Railway Company, which opened in 1850. The building appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1858-60 with its front facing directly towards the railway embankment. Around the 1870s, Brooklands was acquired by Strean Presbyterian Church and subsequently served as the church manse. All that survives today is the former stable block, which has been extensively altered and converted into a modern dwelling. The surrounding grounds have been developed with modern houses built from the 1970s onwards.