Entrance and field gates at Quintin Castle, 3 Kearney Road, Ballymarter, Portaferry, Co Down, BT22 1QE

Entrance and field gates at Quintin Castle

These unusual medieval-style gates date to around 1855 and form the entrance to the grounds of Quintin Castle, located west of the castle itself on Kearney Road, approximately 3 miles south-east of Portaferry. The main entrance gateway consists of a triangular-arched carriage way set between two crenellated octagonal towers. The larger tower to the south measures approximately 2.5 metres by 7 metres and features a lancet-arched pedestrian doorway on its front elevation facing the road, with a timber-sheeted door. A similar doorway is located at the rear of this tower. Two small window slits are positioned roughly halfway up the front elevation, with two more at the rear. The smaller northern tower measures approximately 1.75 metres by 5 metres and is blank. The towers are set between a boundary wall approximately 3.5 metres in height. Timber gates in a grid design inspired by a portcullis fill the triangular archway opening. Directly opposite, across Kearney Road, stands a much smaller field gate screen with timber picket-fence-like gates between two small crenellated octagonal towers, each measuring approximately 1 metre by 2.5 metres, set within a low rubble field wall approximately 0.75 metres high.

These gates were constructed around 1855 during the remodelling and extension of Quintin Castle by Mrs Elizabeth Calvert and her husband, Reverend Nicholson Calvert. The castle itself occupies the ruins of a 12th-century medieval fortress originally built by the Anglo-Norman John de Courcy. During the later medieval period the castle was held by the Smith family as dependents of the Savages. In the mid-1600s Sir James Montgomery, related to the Savages, purchased the castle and lands from Dualtagh Smith and renovated the structure, adding a large house and walled courtyard. Following a brief Cromwellian occupation in the 1650s, the Montgomerys sold the castle to George Ross of Kearney, though he never resided there. By the 1850s, when Mrs Elizabeth Calvert inherited this roofless and dilapidated structure, much of its stone had been removed by local people. Her extensive remodelling raised the height of the central keep, added drawing and dining rooms, and rebuilt the courtyard walls, gates and outer towers.