The Rectory, 8 Cloughy Road, Portaferry, Co Down, BT22 1ND

The Rectory, 8 Cloughy Road, Portaferry

This is a very fine, large rectory house of 1818, two storeys with an attic, to which a large three-storey rear extension was added around 1830, and a later 19th-century flat-roofed porch to the front. The building belongs to the Church of Ireland and stands at the end of a short drive on the north-west side of Cloughy Road, on the north-eastern outskirts of Portaferry. It is roughly L-shaped in plan.

The front (south-west) façade is symmetrical. At ground-floor level, a later 19th-century flat-roofed porch projects forward from the centre. The porch has timber and glazed double doors set within a segmental arch recess on its south-east face, a large multi-pane window in a similar but broader recess to the front, and a further similar window in a narrower door-width recess to the left. Behind the porch, and concealed by it, is the original entrance doorway, which retains its timber panel-and-glazed double doors, sidelights, and an elliptical fanlight with radial tracery. To the left of the porch is a tripartite sash window with Georgian panes, and there is a matching window to the right. On the first floor, three similar but slightly shorter windows correspond to these openings below.

The south-east elevation is formed by the gable of the main house merging into the side of the large three-storey return. At ground-floor level there is a narrow single sash window to the left (on the gable) and a slightly shorter double sash window to the right. The first floor of the return has three sash windows with Georgian panes, with three similar windows on the second floor, and two windows at a slightly higher attic level on the gable of the main house. The north-west gable of the main house has a small six-pane window to the left at first-floor level and two larger sash windows at attic level.

To the rear (north-east) façade of the return, there is a double sash window at ground-floor level and a four-pane window to the right on the first floor. On the north-west façade of the return, there is a ground-floor doorway to the left with a partly glazed door, and immediately to the right of this, abutting the rear of the main section of the house, is a single-storey lean-to. The lean-to has a four-pane window on its north-east face and two small windows on its north-west face. At first-floor level on the north-west façade of the return there is a small four-pane window.

On the rear façade of the main house there is a double sash window at ground-floor level. On the first floor to the right is a small eight-pane casement window. To its left, directly above the lean-to, are two stairwell sash windows with Georgian panes. The upper and larger of these is set within a substantial half-dormer over the stairwell, with a hipped roof.

The exterior is finished in unpainted roughcast with vermiculated quoins to the front. The roofs of the main house and the return are gabled and covered with Bangor blue slates. There are two yellow brick chimneys with dentilled corbelling on the main house and one on the return. The front elevation has a noticeably greater eaves overhang than elsewhere, with a smooth plaster eaves course and soffit. Rainwater goods are cast iron throughout. Single-storey outbuildings stand to the rear.

The site has significant historical depth. It stands on the ground of the medieval church of St Nicholas and its former graveyard, and human bones have occasionally been unearthed in the rectory grounds. A rectory is believed to have been built here around 1684 to 1706 by the Reverend Archibald McNeale, Chancellor of Down, as recorded by Walter Harris in his 1744 account of County Down. The present structure dates from 1818 and was built at a cost of £1,090. Whether any fabric from McNeale's earlier house was incorporated into the 1818 building is uncertain. A former resident, the Reverend Sidney McCullough, believed that parts of the present building predate 1818, and early valuation records of around 1838 appear to support this, since certain parts of the house were graded 'B' by the valuers, suggesting they may be of late 18th-century origin.

The large three-storey return is traditionally attributed to the Reverend J.L.M. Scott and said to date from the 1840s, but it is already recorded in valuation returns of 1838, when the Reverend St John Smith was in residence. At that date the property also possessed a water closet, dairy, fowl house, hay loft, cow house, and shed. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of the same period describe the building as "highly characteristic of a glebe house, almost surrounded by a plantation." A plan of the premises dating from 1870, held by the current incumbent, shows the rectory broadly as it appears today, including the front porch, though it also suggests that the present back yard may at one time have been built upon, indicating the possible former presence of a now-demolished outbuilding.

Nothing survives of the medieval church of St Nicholas. The listed extent includes the house, outbuildings, walling, gates, and gate piers.