4 Clandeboye Cottages, Belfast Road, Clandeboye, Bangor, Co Down, BT19 1RJ

4 Clandeboye Cottages is a one-and-a-half-storey, single-bay, mid-terrace Victorian workers' cottage built around 1855, one of a terrace of thirteen erected for the Clandeboye Estate. It sits on the north side of the main Belfast to Bangor Road, directly opposite the entrance to the Clandeboye Estate, on a steeply sloping site in the townland of Ballyleidy.

The cottage has a pitched natural slate roof with intermediate bands of fish-scale courses and clay ridge tiles. The chimney is a replacement in red brick. Cast-iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout, comprising half-circle gutters and circular downpipes, with a uPVC soil and vent pipe to the rear. The walls are smooth rendered with a projecting plinth and corbel course. Windows are replacement timber side-hung single-glazed casements; those at ground floor level have chamfered flush cills with moulded sandstone surrounds and mullions, while the first-floor windows have plain chamfered surrounds and cills. The front door is timber, set within a Tudor-arched opening with moulded surrounds and a fixed light above.

The principal elevation faces west and is asymmetrically arranged. The front door is positioned to the left, with a tripartite ground-floor window to the right featuring painted mullions and surrounds with horizontal timber glazing bars. Above the ground-floor window sits a wall-head dormer containing a bipartite window, also with horizontal glazing bars. The left elevation abuts number 5 Clandeboye Cottages, and the right elevation abuts number 3.

The rear elevation is principally symmetrically arranged and faced in red brick laid in English garden wall bond. A timber-sheeted rear door with an outward-swinging stable door is centrally positioned, flanked by camber-headed arched sash windows with stone cills at both ground and first floor. The ground-floor right-hand window is a double-glazed replacement.

To the front is a garden on a steep sloping site. To the rear is a yard containing terraced outbuildings in red brick with slated pitched roofs, comprising an external toilet and storage. Rear access is via a timber ledge-and-braced solid gate. To the west lies rural landscape; to the south, a busy dual carriageway; and modern housing development lies to the north and east.

The terrace as a whole has presented researchers with a dating puzzle. A datestone bearing the year 1867 is visible on the south facade, yet the terrace appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, nine years earlier. The datestone is not in its original position — an early survey photograph clearly shows a window where it now sits, and records from 1973 indicate that at that time the stone was detached and lying in a back yard. It is therefore considered likely that the datestone originated from another structure on the estate rather than from this terrace. While it cannot be entirely ruled out that the terrace was added to the map at a later date, this practice was generally confined to railway-related buildings rather than residential housing. The terrace does not appear separately in Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, though this is not conclusive, as estate buildings were frequently absorbed into the overall valuation of an estate. When the cottages first appear in the Annual Revisions in 1866, all are listed as vacant, which may suggest they had only recently been completed internally. On balance, a construction date in the mid-1850s best reconciles the available evidence and is consistent with inspection of the buildings themselves.

The terrace of thirteen dwellings, with outbuildings to the rear and a reading room, stood on the northern edge of the then Clandeboye Estate. To the north was a shelter belt of trees known as the Walmer Screen, and to the east a wooded area called Walmer Grove — both named after Walmer, a Cinque Port of which Lord Dufferin served as warden. Correspondence from 1869 between Lord Dufferin and Mortimer Thomson concerning the allocation of estate cottages may relate to these buildings. The Annual Revisions record numerous changes of occupier and occasional periods of vacancy from 1866 onwards, consistent with use as estate workers' cottages. All dwellings were leased from Lord Dufferin and Clandeboye and were valued at £3 10s, rising to £4 in 1874, indicating some improvements were made to the properties at that time.

The architect responsible for the terrace is unknown, but both Benjamin Ferrey and William Henry Lynn were working with Lord Dufferin during the 1850s and 1860s and are therefore possible candidates. The 1901 Ordnance Survey map captions the row as "Red Cottages", a reference to what was originally a brick frontage; however, the estate office records that the terrace was always known locally as "Red Row", and the now-rendered cottages are today called Clandeboye Cottages.

Each house originally had a front garden and a small rear plot for growing vegetables. The cottages were also originally designed with an open porch area, which was enclosed by bringing the front doors forward prior to the 1973 listing survey. A row of sheds running behind the cottages appears on the 1858 Ordnance Survey map, confirming they are contemporary with the cottages themselves. In 1985, extensive repairs and improvements were carried out, including replacing internal doors and frames, replacing floorboards, removing kitchen units and walls, taking down and rebuilding chimneys, connecting the houses to sewers and electricity, and replacing front and back doors. Gas heating has since been introduced, and copper pipework is visible to the rear elevations.

Although the cottage has been modernised, its original detailing survives and contributes to the group value and interest of the terrace as a whole. The terrace is considered a good example of estate workers' housing and one of only a few such terraces surviving in the province. The cottages remain owned by the Clandeboye Estate and are still, in many cases, the homes of estate workers or their descendants, giving a remarkable continuity of use from the time they were first built.