Brooke House, 41 Crawfordsburn Road, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT23 4EA

Brooke House is a large two storey late Victorian house dating from approximately 1875-1880, situated prominently near the junction of Crawfordsburn and Mountain Roads on the northern edge of Newtownards. The building is well preserved both externally and internally.

The house is constructed with rendered walls and a natural slate roof. The rendered facades are finished in lined render with chamfered quoins and a plinth course. The pitched roofs of the main house and return are covered in Bangor blue slates, with decorative barge boards featuring finials and a series of twinned corbels to the eaves. Two central yellow brick chimney stacks rise from the main roof, with one from the roof of the return. Cast iron rainwater goods are present.

The south-facing front elevation has a central doorway with a timber panelled door and plain fanlight with segmental arch head. The door and fanlight are encased with fluted pilasters returned at the sides, curved moulded brackets with swags below a cornice, and a decorative keystone to the segmental arch headed opening. A blocking course above the cornice curves into the sill of the window directly above. To the left of the doorway are twin segmental arch window openings with moulded architraves and decorative keystones, resting on a sill course with brackets. To the right are a similar set. First floor windows include a similar arrangement of twin windows to left and right of centre, with a single window at centre. The east gable contains a single window to the left and twin windows to the right on both ground and first floors, with a similar set of twin windows at attic level high in the gable. This gable merges with a large two storey gabled return. The east facade of the return has twin windows to the left and a single window to the right on both ground and first floors. The north gable facade of the return has a modern sliding patio door to the ground floor. The west gable of the main house contains two single windows on the ground floor with a glazed PVC door sandwiched between them, and twin windows to the left and a single window to the right on the first floor, with twin attic windows as the east gable. A long single storey flat roofed store is attached to the right-hand side of the rear. To the centre of the rear is a two storey projecting flat roofed bay with a PVC door to the ground floor and twin windows to the first floor. The west facade of the long return has a PVC window to the left on the ground floor and a single window to the right on the first floor. Most window frames are two pane PVC made to resemble original sash frames, with margins and coloured glass to some examples.

The current window frames are modern replacements, and a glazed PVC door and sliding patio door have been added. Despite these alterations, the building retains its essential late Victorian character.

Ordnance Survey maps from 1834 and approximately 1858-1860 show a house on this site, though the plan does not precisely match the present building, which appears entirely late Victorian in character. Local tradition suggests the house may have been designed and built by a member of the locally prominent Dickson family as a wedding present for his new wife.