Rubane House, 62 Gransha Road, Echlinville, Portavogie, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT22 1AJ

Rubane House is a large Italianate gentleman's residence constructed around 1850, built over the remains of earlier dwellings dating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It stands approximately two miles south-east of Kircubbin within its own partially wooded estate of some nine hectares.

The house is two storeys over a semi-basement with a hipped roof of Bangor blue slate. The main plan is roughly rectangular, with a single-storey wing to the north-west (now a snooker room). The walls are finished in lined and painted render. Windows are predominantly double-hung timber sash and case with horizontal and vertical astragals. The main entrance is positioned on the side of a projecting two-storey bay in the middle of the south-west elevation. This entrance facade and portions of the adjoining facades display rusticated and heavily chamfered moulded quoins to the window openings and corners of the ground and first floors. The semi-basement walls are slightly battered and form a simple plinth supporting the upper storeys. Ground and first floor windows rest on a projecting cill course. At eaves level, a cornice effect is created by a large cast iron ogee gutter set on a moulded eaves course supported on dentils.

The single-storey north-west wing largely dates from the eighteenth century. It originally served as a library, then became a chapel, and is now used as a snooker room with recent alterations and extensions creating a double garage as well. To the right of the south-west facade of this wing, windows are framed with Ionic pilasters and have round heads with moulded decorative keystones in Coade Stone ceramic.

On the south-east side, a modern corridor link extension was recently demolished. Work continues in this area with a new entrance porch constructed with a steeply pitched and hipped roof supported on plain screen walls with pilasters to the ends. Low screen walls project forward to meet urns with planting, enclosing steps that lead down to a patio area.

The house encloses sections of fabric from much older buildings. The original house, known as Echlinville, was built around 1725, probably around a seventeenth-century dwelling. It was built by a descendant of Dr. Robert Echlin, an early seventeenth-century Bishop of Down and Connor, and remained in the family's possession until around 1848. The original house was of Jacobean or Queen Anne style with two two-storey ogee gabled bays flanking the main entrance. It was added to throughout the later eighteenth century, most significantly with the library to the north-west.

Around 1850, James Cleland purchased the property and rebuilt the house in its present Italianate form, renaming it Rubane House after the former name of the townland. The house later passed to the Maxwell family, and by 1880 was in possession of the Warnock family, relations of the Maxwells, who may have embellished the property and added the quoins. During the first half of the twentieth century it was occupied by various owners including Belfast timber merchant J.P. Corry.

In 1950, Rubane and its lands were purchased by the De La Salle Brothers and operated as a home and school for orphaned and special needs boys until 1985. During this period extensive modern buildings were constructed in the immediate grounds, including classrooms, gymnasiums, wood and metalworking rooms and chalets to the north-west, south-west and north-east, with playing fields and tennis courts laid out to the north and north-west. A small section of these modern buildings was briefly occupied by another religious order around 1990, but the site then fell largely vacant and the house suffered vandal damage. The property was purchased in 1992 by the present owner, who has since demolished almost all the modern school buildings, carried out extensive restoration work on the house itself (now nearly complete), and landscaped much of the southern grounds. Restoration of the stables to the north is to begin soon.

Close to the main house stands a small garden pavilion or summer house dating to the later eighteenth century. It was originally built with open arches. Around 1800, with construction of the stable block to the north-east, walls were placed to the north-west and north-east of the pavilion, the arches were blocked, and a new entrance was opened to the north-east. At the same time an internal wall, fireplaces and a small chimney stack were installed, and windows were added to the south-east and north-west arches.