The Cloisters, 3 Marino Park, Old Quay Road, Marino, Holywood, Co. Down, BT18 0AN

The Cloisters, 3 Marino Park, Holywood, Co. Down

The Cloisters is a semi-detached two-storey Tudor-Gothic villa built around 1820–1830 to designs by the architect John Millar, originally constructed for Thomas Ward as one of a small group of similarly styled villas intended as seasonal bathing houses for the merchant classes of Belfast. Together with its immediate neighbour Marino Villa, it forms a particularly notable pair within this enclave, sharing the group's characteristic lozenge-shaped chimneystacks, raised saddleback fractables to gables, and Gothic detailing, while distinguished by its own distinctive U-shaped plan arranged around a rectangular courtyard.

Architectural Description

The house faces nominally north (north-west) and sits on the south side of Marino Park. Its most striking external feature is the courtyard frontage, which is enclosed toward the street by a cloistered arrangement of six four-centred Tudor arches with a dividing wall to the centre. The principal entrance door is set within the leftmost of three arched recesses corresponding to this cloister, the remaining two being blind. The door itself is vertically panelled with a pointed arch, a sandstone flagged threshold, and cast-iron door furniture.

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with blue-black angled ridge tiles and saddleback fractables to the gables. The principal chimneystack sits centrally on the main ridge and comprises five tall unrendered flues with moulded caps on a rectangular base, all lozenge-shaped except the central flue. Two further slender lozenge-shaped stacks rise from a stepped, projecting gabled chimneybreast to the east. Rainwater goods are half-round cast iron. Walling is rendered over a bevelled plinth and painted white.

Windows throughout are timber multi-paned double side-hung casements with chamfered reveals and cills. Those on the east gable have label mouldings. The north gable has a canted timber bay window at ground floor and a single window at first floor. The east elevation has a projecting gabled bay to its centre, with a window to each floor; the ground-floor window in this bay is tripartite with timber mullions. The cheeks of this bay are blank. The right side of the east elevation has a window set into the gable of the chimneybreast. To the left, the house is abutted by a lean-to outbuilding screened by an English Garden wall-bonded red brick wall with castellated coping painted white.

The rear (south) elevation has a gable to the right containing multi-pane French doors opening onto a patio, a small arched offset window, and a first-floor window. The left side of the rear appears to have enlarged openings. The courtyard elevations could not be inspected at the time of survey, though external inspection suggests the west courtyard elevation has two blind rectangular recesses and a window set into a gable, and that there is a shared gable at the centre of the north courtyard elevation, presumably common to both semi-detached houses.

Historical Context

The building was constructed for Thomas Ward and is recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834 as one of a number of villas within a single plot. The Townland Valuation of 1828–40 describes the current pair of dwellings as "two houses and offices," the property of Mr Thomas Ward, valued at £34 9s. Writing in 1837, Samuel Lewis described the houses as being among several in the area built "chiefly in the Elizabethan style of architecture" on the Cultra estate to designs by Millar, noting that they were "sheltered with thriving plantations and beautifully situated on a gentle eminence commanding a richly diversified and extensive prospect of Carrickfergus bay, the Black mountain, Cave hill, the Carnmoney mountains and the town and castle of Carrickfergus, the view terminating with the basaltic columns of Black Head." However, the Ordnance Survey Memoirs record the houses as already complete by 1834, and note that they "have been built for the bathing season, when they are generally filled from Belfast." The architectural historian C.E.B. Brett has suggested that the pair may have been based by Millar on a design published in J.C. Loudon's Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture.

By the time of Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, the western villa was occupied by Robert Patterson, a successful Belfast businessman and distinguished naturalist. Patterson was a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, and published numerous works on natural history, including Letters on the Natural History of the Insects Mentioned in Shakespeare's Plays (1838), Introduction to Zoology for the Use of Schools (1846 and 1848), First Steps to Zoology, and Zoological Diagrams (1853). He was active in several Belfast civic institutions including the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, and served as one of the Belfast harbour commissioners from 1858 to 1870. Marino appears to have served as a summer residence for him and his family. He retired in 1865 and died in 1872 at his residence at 6 College Square North, Belfast. Both villas were valued at £39 during his occupancy. By 1880 the house had passed to Edgar Arnold, a merchant, who died in 1900, and by 1886 the value of both houses had been reduced to £30.

By 1907 the valuation had fallen further to £21, suggesting the house may have fallen somewhat into disrepair, but by 1908 a Hugh Adair was recorded in residence — possibly Hugh Adair the publisher of Hugh Adair's Belfast Directory of 1860–61, though this could not be positively confirmed. By 1919 the occupier was William Pyper, who appears to have been a master at Campbell College from 1895 to 1917. Pyper was still in residence after 1933, by which time the valuation had been raised again in stages to £31. A valuer's description from this period records the accommodation as comprising two reception rooms, a kitchen, scullery, washhouse, three pantries, four bedrooms, a bathroom and a WC, with a gas supply to three rooms and well water served by a pump. The valuer described the house as "old fashioned" but noted it had a "good view" and a "nice situation." The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 shows the villas captioned "Marino," and the map of 1900–02 captions them "Marino Villas."

Brett records that all the houses in this group were acquired in the post-war years and narrowly escaped destruction, and that they have since been sympathetically restored.

Setting

The immediate setting comprises a cobbled parking area to the front of the house, with a tree and hedge-bounded garden to the east.