The Tower House, 34 Quay Street, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 5ED

The Tower House, 34 Quay Street, Bangor

The Tower House is a three-storey, three-bay former customs house dating from 1637, with an attached four-stage crenellated tower, now in use as a tourist information centre and council offices. It is the only surviving link with the foundation of Bangor as a modern town — following the town's monastic beginnings in the sixth century — and is one of very few intact 17th-century buildings remaining in use anywhere in Northern Ireland. There is some scholarly debate about its precise status: Patton describes it as the only tower house in the province still occupying an urban site, while Brett points to comparable structures surviving in Ardglass, Strangford and Portaferry. The building is also recorded as a monument.

Origins and Historical Background

The customs house was built in 1637 under the direction of Sir James Hamilton, later Lord Clandeboy, who had been granted lands in North Down by James I in 1605 and set about rebuilding and developing Bangor. Hamilton was granted a warrant to make Bangor a maritime port in 1620, and in the reign of Charles I, efforts to improve the Crown's income from Irish customs provided the context in which construction of the customs house — with its flanking watchtowers — was undertaken.

Charles Monck, reporting on customs in the north of Ireland in 1637, described what he found: "There is a fair custom house built but not finished by the Lord of Clanneboy, who hath received between two and three hundred pounds of the King towards it, and hath bestowed at least six hundred pounds already and two hundred more will hardly finish it: it is a large pile of stone made with flankers and might serve well for defence of the harbour. There are very large storehouses, lodging chambers for officers, with chimneys, studies and places to lay all sorts of commodities in…if it were finished it were the best customhouse in Ireland, and stands as conveniently as it can be placed to the ground given by his Lordship for a wharf and crane…it is a pity but either the King's Majesty or his Lordship should finish that work so happily begun by his Lordship of the customhouse."

Architectural Description

The building is rectangular on plan, plainly detailed, and typical of its period in its use of crow-stepped gables and corbelling. The four-stage tower projects slightly forward at the north-west corner. The roof is pitched natural slate with angled clay ridge tiles and a simple rubble stone chimneystack at the left gable. Rainwater goods are half-round cast iron over corbelled eaves. Walling is generally random rubble stone bedded in lime mortar, with the exception of the west elevation, which is painted roughcast with a smooth rendered base course and a slight batter to the left side. Most elevations retain early detailing including window dressings and relieving arches.

The principal elevation faces west and has three equally spaced openings to each floor, except at ground floor level where there are two openings to the left of the central door. The central door has a plain transom over and is accessed by a disabled access ramp. Windows to the house are one-over-one replacement horned sashes, generally with painted stone sills; those to the tower are fixed lights. On the rubble stone elevations and tower, windows have sandstone rubble jambs and lintels, occasionally dressed. To the rear, several cast-concrete replacement cills and lintels are present. Windows to the rendered elevation have plain reveals. Doors throughout are timber sheeted.

The left gable is crow-stepped and otherwise blank, with evidence of a blocked opening at ground floor centre. It is abutted at the right by the tower, and at the re-entrant angle between gable and tower there is a further smaller tower — probably a former stair tower — rising from a corbelled sandstone base at first floor level and carried on a relieving arch spanning the angle. Tower openings are irregular, and there is a door to the south projecting side of the tower, accessed by two sandstone steps.

The rear elevation has three openings to each floor with an escape door to the central bay at each level. The second-floor escape door has recent sandstone jambs and lintel and is served by a metal fire escape. The right gable is abutted at an angle by an adjoining four-storey building.

Interior

The Archaeological Survey of County Down, compiled in 1966, noted that the building had by then already been considerably altered and that no original ground floor openings could be positively identified, though three original lights survived at first floor level in the east wall. Most of the original lights in the tower were by then blocked, and a modern sash window had been inserted at first floor level on the north-west. Communication between the house and the tower at ground floor level was presumably originally via a door at the north-west angle of the house; this was at that time blocked and obscured by plaster, though it has since been reopened.

Commencing at first floor level of the tower, and originally accessible from the upper floors of the house, was a stair apparently of timber construction. This stair is lit by narrow loops at second and third floor levels, and a modern sash window had been inserted at one of these stages. The tower and stair turret have a battlemented parapet at roof level, which had been rebuilt throughout by the time of the 1966 survey.

History of Uses and Later Alterations

In the early 1660s Bangor began to decline as a seaport and the customs house was leased in 1672 by the owner of a corn mill. By the late 17th century, William Montgomery described it (1683) as "a large slated house double lofted, intended at first for a custom-house, both built by ye said Lord Clandeboye, from hence is a usual passage to Carrickfergus." By the 18th century the building appears to have fallen into disuse and disrepair: in 1744 Harris wrote that the customs house, "an oblong Pile of Building with a Tower at the North End," was "now in Ruins."

By the early 19th century the building was in use again. Lewis noted in 1837 that "Near the quay is an old building supposed to have been used as a custom-house, the tower of which has been converted into dwelling houses." The Townland Valuation listed it as a house, offices and yard valued at £11 and occupied by Hugh Campbell. By the mid-19th century the tower and house were being assessed separately: Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 listed the tower as a coastguard watch tower valued at £3, while the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 captions the building as a Coastguard Station. At that time the attached house was the residence of Margaret Halliday, leased from Robert E Ward at a rent of over £20 plus taxes, and valued at £17. Dimensions recorded were 15 by 8½ by 2¾.

The tower continued to be recorded as a coastguard watch tower until 1903, when it began to be described as a watch tower, office, yard and hoarding, occupied by R G Ward and leased from Baroness Clanmorris. A succession of tenants occupied the house: David Harvey was resident by 1872, and W G Lyttle wrote in 1885 that the Tower House — so called from the medieval-looking castellated building adjoining and forming part of the residence of Harvey, then the harbour master — "at once arrests the eye of a visitor landing at the pier," and that the tower was known as the summer studio of Robert Seggons, a Belfast photographer celebrated for his marine views. This use is not reflected in the valuation records but is not necessarily inconsistent with its continued designation as a watch tower. Alexander Boyd was the occupier in 1888; the valuation was reduced to £15 in 1903, and Samuel Keenan became occupier in 1908 with Baroness Clanmorris as immediate lessor.

In 1923 both parts of the building were purchased from Lady Clanmorris by Bangor Urban District Council. Various uses were considered in the 1920s, including a museum or information bureau, but these did not come to fruition. A motion to demolish the tower for road widening was rejected at a full council meeting in the late 1920s. Instead, the Council opened hot sea water baths in the building in 1933. The baths occupied the ground floor of the house and were priced at one shilling; sea water was pumped from the Central Pier opposite and heated by gas-fired boilers in the back yard, with a caretaker living on the upper two floors. The Council publicised the health benefits with the declaration: "Your doctor will tell you that there's no need to go to Droitwich when you can soak in a brine bath at home!" The baths were considered beneficial for rheumatism, sciatica and other disorders and remained open until 1954, when falling revenue led to their closure.

In 1955 the house was let to an antique dealer, Mr Angus J Macdonald. Shortly afterwards a wall enclosing the corbelling of the turret was removed and seats were provided in the alcove thus created. The house and tower were listed in 1979 and major remedial work was undertaken in 1982, during which some corbelling was replaced; the architects were Messrs Larry Thompson and Partners of Belfast. In 1983 the Council opened a Tourist Information Centre in the house with an exhibition space. The building has survived almost three hundred years of unbroken and various use, though it has been compromised by modern alterations.

Setting

The building is street-fronted and prominently located at the junction of Quay Street and Victoria Road. To the rear is a car park accessed by electronic gates, bounded by other buildings on all sides.