10 Kearney Village, Kearney Road, Kearney, Portaferry, Co Down, BT22 1QP

10 Kearney Village is a large and well-proportioned formal two-storey house, probably dating from the 1840s. The building appears to be largely intact externally and is situated on the western side of Kearney Village, approximately three miles south-east of Portaferry. It has group value with the other listed buildings in the village.

The house has a symmetrical west-facing front façade. A timber panel door with simple pilasters and plain entablature and cornice occupies the centre of the ground floor, flanked by single sash windows with Georgian panes to either side. The first floor has three evenly-spaced similar sash windows. A low rendered wall with openings to left and right fronts the door.

The north gable has a sash window to the right on the ground floor with one directly above on the first floor, and a window-like recess to the left on the first floor. The south gable has two similar but smaller windows to the first floor.

The rear elevation features an almost centrally-positioned plain timber-sheeted back door with a front-style sash window to the left and a smaller similar window to the right on the ground floor. Three first-floor windows match the front but are slightly smaller; the middle window is set slightly lower than those to left and right. A small lean-to store extension is attached to the left of the rear ground floor, flush with the gable.

The entire façade is finished in lined render and painted. The gabled roof is covered with Bangor blue slates. Stone parapets and two yellow brick chimney stacks with dentilled corbelling are present. Cast iron gutters and down spouts complete the external detailing.

Ordnance Survey mapping suggests a building on this site in 1834, though its shape and position do not match the present dwelling precisely. The 1860 revised map shows a building which appears to correspond to the present house in size and positioning, supporting a dating of circa 1840s.

Kearney Village itself has a documented history extending back to early medieval times, when the townland was held by the McKearney family. By the later medieval period it passed to the Gaelicised Norman Savages, who leased to the Smiths. A 1643 lease from Patrick Savage to Patrick Smith references the mill, mill ponds and watercourses—then among Kearney's most lucrative assets. By the later 17th century the Savages had leased much of Kearney to the Ross family of Rosstrevor, who held the lands throughout the 18th century.

The first indication of a substantial settlement at the present village site appears in a lease of March 1729. This grew throughout the remainder of the century, with residents employed on local farms and at two nearby flax and corn mills, supplementing their income through salvage of frequent shipwrecks and possibly smuggling and wrecking. The village likely reached its peak in population and activity in the 1830s, when it contained 33 families, two schools (one Church of Ireland and Catholic, the other Presbyterian), and a ceilidh house. Most buildings visible today appear to have been present at this time, though the 1836 valuation records only three single-storey dwellings, occupied by Hugh and John McNabb and Widow Hasty, who owned the nearby windmill.

Decline began in the latter half of the 19th century; by 1900 the population had halved as residents sought prosperity in towns or emigrated. By 1938 Hugh Orr had acquired most Kearney farms and cottages. The decline continued so that by 1945 only three houses held a total of seven residents. When the National Trust acquired the village twenty years later using funds from the Enterprise Neptune campaign, it was nearly a ghost town. Since 1965 the Trust has worked to restore and reconstruct Kearney based on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map plan, when the settlement had probably reached its zenith. Most houses are now occupied as full-time homes or holiday residences, all leased from the Trust, with only one original dwelling currently vacant awaiting imminent restoration.