Mount Stewart & garden walls, Mount Stewart, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT22 2RU

Mount Stewart is a large, relatively sober and restrained two-storey, hipped-roof Classical style country house built in greywacke snecked rubble with sandstone dressings and a large Ionic porte cochère. It took its present form in around 1835–40, when the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry commissioned the Irish architect William Vitruvius Morrison to replace most of what had been a largely 18th-century dwelling, while retaining and blending in an addition to the west side built in 1805 by George Dance of London. Now in the care of the National Trust, the house is set within a large estate on the east coast of Strangford Lough, roughly two miles north-west of Greyabbey. It has a large gravel forecourt to the front (north-east) and an elaborate ornamental garden to the west.

The roof is covered in Bangor blue slates and carries a great many rendered chimney stacks with decorative cream-coloured clay pots. There is a large central roof-light dome which illuminates the main hall and staircase, though it is not visible from ground level. Cast iron rainwater goods are used throughout. Much of the south façade and portions of the north are covered in climbing greenery.

The front (north-east) elevation is dominated by a large central Ionic columned porte cochère with entablature and pediment. Set within the porte cochère is the relatively modest main entrance, consisting of a timber-panelled double door encased with simple pilasters, curved brackets, a cornice and a blocking course. To either side of the porte cochère the walls project slightly, each of these bays having a central pediment. There is a similar pedimented bay on the west elevation, where a tripartite window occupies the ground floor — this was originally an elliptical arched doorway that now serves as a third tripartite window. Generally, the windows throughout the house are sash with Georgian panes; the bays to the front and west side have tripartite windows, while those on the ground floor of the rear elevation on either side of the porch are French or casement in style.

To the rear or garden side, there is a central projection with a pediment and a single-storey porch, again with Ionic columns. The carved arms of the Vane-Tempest-Stewart and Chaplin families were added to this pediment in 1924. At each end of the rear elevation is a full-height semicircular bay. The section of the house at the south-east corner is shorter and less grand in appearance than the main house and merges with an even smaller, more informal L-shaped section that has brick dressings to its openings, is partly brick-built, and was probably added in the late 19th century. On the north side of this south-east section there is a small modern single-storey extension constructed in concrete brick, with a large concrete brick boiler chimney above. Much of this section is obscured by greenery and is not readily visible when viewing the main house.

A decorative balustrade with urns — broadly similar to that on the parapet — runs around the forecourt to the north of the house.

Internally, Morrison continued the neo-classical theme, with Ionic columns on the north and south sides of the octagonal main hall and in the drawing room to the south. Substantial portions of the Dance wing were left untouched, including what is now Lady Londonderry's sitting room, the music room, the Castlereagh room and the staircase. The former entrance hall was, however, removed — a bracketed tripartite window was put in place of the former front doorway — and the dining room was placed in its stead.

During the ownership of the 7th Marquess, who came to live at Mount Stewart in 1921, the house underwent several notable changes. A ceiling was installed in the full-height south hall, creating a smoking room on the ground floor and a bedroom above, and the dome that had formerly lit that hall was removed. The house was also entirely redecorated and largely re-furnished, mainly under the direction of Edith, Lady Londonderry.

The garden immediately to the north-west and south-west of the house was begun by Edith, Lady Londonderry in 1921 and was gradually developed by her over a period of 35 years. It is elaborate and very much a reflection of its creator's tastes.

The Italian garden to the south of the house is roughly square in plan and is approached from the terrace on its north side via a flight of stone steps. It is enclosed all around by a low stone wall, with balustrades to the north and a tall row of evenly spaced columns to the south. Most of these southern columns have been moulded in the fantastic shape of a monkey-like beast with an urn on its head and a human face further down the pillar; each pillar carries a different face, each of which may have corresponded to a real person. At the centre of the south wall are two sets of matching double pillars, each topped with a griffin figure. Between these stands a carved stone basin, beyond which a curved flight of stone steps — with moulded heraldic lions at either side — leads into the Spanish garden, a smaller rectangular plot with a small hipped pantile-roofed summer house at its south end. The central portion of the Spanish garden is sunken.

In the middle of the east wall of the Italian garden is a decorative set of stone steps leading from a north-to-south terrace known as the Dodo Terrace, named after the moulded dodo figures on stone pillars near the steps. This terrace also carries other fantastic and more conventional animal mouldings on pillars and elsewhere along its length. On top of the balustrade on the steps leading to the Dodo Terrace is a stylised moulding of an ark. At the south end of the terrace is a small stone portico with a flat roof supported by a wall to the south and four Tuscan-like columns to the north. Two orange-coloured moulded griffin figures stand on the portico roof and there are moulded heraldic motifs on the rear wall.

To the west of the house is the Sunk garden, which, as its name suggests, is sunken and square in plan. It connects further to the west with the Shamrock garden, so called because of its shape. Neither of these gardens appears to feature stonework or mouldings of the kind found elsewhere, their principal features being floral, including a topiary harp. However, to the north side of the Sunk garden there is a set of decorative gate piers with moulded heraldic crown and swan motifs, together with decorative wrought iron gates.

As one might expect, much of the garden walling is obscured by greenery.

The decorative animal and fantastical figures throughout the garden were moulded in chicken wire and cement by Thomas Beattie of Newtownards. Many of them are believed to represent friends of Lady Londonderry — among them Churchill, Ramsay MacDonald and Carson — who formed part of her famous Ark Club, an informal dining club she originally founded during the First World War, in which each member was given the name of a bird, beast or magical character.

The origins of the present house can be traced to the mid-18th century. Alexander Stewart — great-grandson of John McGregor, a Scots Highlander who had migrated to County Donegal in the early 17th century and appears to have changed his name to Stewart in order to disassociate himself from the then-attainted McGregor clan — became a successful linen merchant working in both Belfast and London, and served as MP for Londonderry city for a short period in the Irish House of Commons. In 1737 he married his cousin Mary Cowan, the heiress to a large fortune whose marriage settlement recommended that a portion of the inheritance be invested in real estate. Accordingly, Alexander and his wife acquired the Manors of Newtownards and Comber from Robert Colville in 1744 at a cost of £42,000. The Manor of Newtownards included the Templecrone demesne, a few miles south-east of the town, where Alexander built a modest house he named Mount Pleasant. Plans discovered among the Londonderry Papers at PRONI (D.654/S1/16) in the mid-1990s, identified as the work of architect James Gibbs and possibly dating from around 1739, suggest that Alexander may have intended to build a larger and grander dwelling; however, this is extremely tentative and it is possible that these plans relate to properties subsequently acquired by the family in England.

In 1771 Alexander's son Robert was elected to the Irish Commons as MP for County Down. To reflect this new status and to accommodate Robert's growing family, Alexander set about extending the house — by this point renamed Mount Stewart — throughout the 1770s. By 1779 plans had been formulated for an entirely new house, which evidence suggests was to be sited further to the north-east on Bean Hill, near the present farmyard. Alexander died in 1781, leaving Robert to press ahead. In 1782 the Temple of the Winds was built to designs by James 'Athenian' Stuart, and architect James Wyatt was commissioned to draw up plans for the new house. In the meantime, a temporary west wing with the main entrance on its west façade was added to the existing residence. Crippling election expenses incurred in 1783, when Robert fought unsuccessfully to retain his parliamentary seat, forced him to postpone Wyatt's plans, but his elevation to the peerage in 1789 as Baron Londonderry appears to have revived his ambitions, and estate accounts from around this time show that considerable sums were being spent on plantations, gardens and other preparatory works. Construction would in all likelihood have proceeded had Robert not been forced to spend upwards of £30,000 on his son — also named Robert, later Lord Castlereagh — in the famous Down election of 1790. Even as Londonderry rose to become a Viscount in 1795 and an Earl the following year, lack of resources kept him in his relatively modest two-storey stuccoed dwelling, which despite the addition of the west wing in 1782–3 was never intended as the finished article.

It was not until 1804, possibly prompted by Castlereagh's entry into the British Cabinet two years earlier, that steps were finally taken to substantially upgrade Mount Stewart. The west wing was largely demolished and a new, grander edifice — with a Grecian porte cochère to the north — was built to designs by George Dance of London. The house remained in this form after Londonderry's death (he had become a Marquess in 1816). Castlereagh, who succeeded as 2nd Marquess, committed suicide in 1822, and the property passed to his half-brother Charles William, the 3rd Marquess. Charles and his wife Frances Vane Tempest owned two other large houses in County Durham — Wynyard Park and Seaham Hall — as well as Holdernesse House in London, and although they did not neglect their Irish estate (many of the smaller buildings within the demesne date from this period), during the 1820s much of their resources were directed into the rebuilding of Wynyard and Holdernesse and the construction of a harbour at Seaham. The compilers of the Ordnance Survey Memoirs in around 1832–4 reported somewhat disappointedly that Mount Stewart was "plain and small for a nobleman's residence, consisting of 2 storeys, with a range of sleeping apartments on the ground floor which have been added to the house" and that there was "not a library nor painting in the house", and while the demesne was ultimately "well laid out" and showed taste, "the architecture of the mansion is not magnificent as might be expected, as a residence of a noble marquis." The 1834 Ordnance Survey map supports these remarks, showing a roughly L-shaped building with the Dance wing to the west and the irregular mass of the original house to the east. Other descriptions from this period enthusiastically praise the Temple of the Winds but say little in the way of eulogy about the house itself.

The situation changed dramatically in the years that followed. In or around 1835, the 3rd Marquess commissioned Irish architect William Vitruvius Morrison to pull down the old house to the east and design a new section to join that built by Dance. An advocate of the Greek Revival himself, Morrison repeated the features of Dance's work throughout the new section, using similar materials to create a coherent and largely symmetrical mansion befitting its owner's status. He shifted the main entrance to the centre of the new north façade, built the large Ionic columned porte cochère, added a porch at the centre of the new south elevation, and constructed a rounded bay at the south-east corner to match Dance's to the west. A dome was placed at the centre of the roof to light the new full-height main hall, with a similar dome lighting another full-height room immediately to the south. A heavy balustrade was added to the parapet to give final coherence to the design as a whole. Morrison died in 1838, probably long before his designs were complete, as estate accounts indicate that building work was only finally finished in around 1848. The 3rd Marquess died in 1854.

The 4th Marquess spent proportionally more time at Mount Stewart than his father — in whose memory he erected Scrabo Tower — but his brother the 5th Marquess chose to live at his wife's estate in Wales, and his nephew the 6th Marquess lived mostly in London. During the First World War the house was used as a convalescent home, and in 1921 the 7th Marquess took up the post of Minister of Education in the Northern Ireland parliament, bringing his family to live at Mount Stewart permanently. The house took on a new lease of life during the following three decades, much of this due to Edith, Lady Londonderry, wife of the 7th Marquess and described as "the most brilliant of all the Londonderry hostesses." On visiting Mount Stewart for the first time in 1914, she had described the house and its surroundings as "the dampest, darkest, and saddest place I had ever stayed in." When she came to live there permanently she set about transforming its surroundings by completely redesigning the gardens to the south and west. In the inter-war years, leading political figures and members of the royal family — as well as Nazi minister Ribbentrop — became guests at Mount Stewart, which became one of the liveliest great houses in the British Isles.

Mount Stewart served as a billet for Allied troops during the Second World War. Upon the death of the 7th Marquess in 1949 the property passed to Lady Londonderry and their youngest daughter, Lady Mairi Bury. In 1957 the gardens were given to the National Trust, and in 1977 Mount Stewart and its principal contents were acquired by the Trust from Lady Mairi. Since then the Trust has opened many sections of the house to the public and maintained the gardens. In 1986 the Trust also acquired Tir na nOg, the decorative walled and turreted burial ground on a hill to the north of the house, built by Lady Edith in the early 1930s and now the final resting place of herself, the 7th Marquess, and their daughter Lady Margaret Stewart.