6 Clandeboye Cottages, Belfast Road, Clandeboye, Bangor, Co Down, BT19 1RJ

Number 6 Clandeboye Cottages is a one-and-a-half-storey, single-bay, mid-terrace Victorian workers' cottage built around 1855, one of a terrace of thirteen dwellings erected for the Clandeboye Estate. It sits on the north side of the main Belfast to Bangor Road, directly opposite the entrance to the Clandeboye Estate, in the townland of Ballyleidy. The terrace is a good example of this type of estate workers' housing and one of only a few such terraces surviving in the Province. It is also of significance for its association with the Clandeboye Estate and its links to the Dufferin family.

Architectural Description

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with intermediate bands of fish-scale courses and clay ridge tiles. The chimney is a replacement in red brick. Cast-iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout, comprising half-circle gutters and circular downpipes; a uPVC soil-and-vent pipe is present to the rear. The external walls are finished in smooth render with a projecting plinth and corbel course. The windows are replacement timber side-hung, single-glazed casement units. On the ground floor these sit within moulded sandstone surrounds and mullions with chamfered flush cills; the first-floor windows have plain chamfered surrounds and cills. The front door is timber, set within a Tudor-arched opening with moulded surrounds and a fixed light above.

The principal elevation faces west and is asymmetrically arranged, with the front door positioned to the left. To the right is a tripartite ground-floor window with painted mullions and surrounds and horizontal timber glazing bars. Above this window is a wall-head dormer containing a bipartite window, also with horizontal glazing bars. The left elevation abuts number 7 Clandeboye Cottages and the right elevation abuts number 5 Clandeboye Cottages.

The rear elevation is principally symmetrically arranged. It is finished in red brick laid in English garden wall bond. A replacement timber rear door is centrally located, flanked on each side at both ground and first floor by camber-headed arched sash windows with stone cills.

Setting

To the front is a garden. To the rear is a yard with terraced outbuildings in red brick with slated pitched roofs, comprising an external toilet and storage. Rear access is via a timber ledge-and-braced solid gate. To the west of the site is rural landscape; to the south is a busy dual carriageway; modern housing development lies to the north and east.

Historical Notes

The terrace presents a small historical puzzle. A datestone bearing the date 1867 is currently visible on the south façade, yet the terrace appears clearly on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, nine years before that date. The datestone is not in its original position — early survey records from 1973 show that at that time it was detached and lying in the back yard of one of the houses, and the first survey photograph clearly shows a window where the datestone now sits. It is therefore quite possible that the datestone originated from a different structure on the estate and was relocated here. While it cannot be entirely ruled out that the terrace was added to the map retrospectively — a practice occasionally used for railway-related buildings — houses beyond the immediate curtilage of a railway were not usually treated this way. The terrace is not separately listed in Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, though this is not conclusive evidence of absence, as estate buildings were frequently included within the overall valuation of an estate rather than identified individually. When the buildings first appear in the Annual Revisions in 1866, they are recorded as vacant, which may suggest they had only just been completed internally. A construction date in the mid-1850s best reconciles the conflicting evidence and is consistent with physical inspection of the terrace.

The terrace, comprising thirteen dwellings with outbuildings to the rear and a reading room, stood on the northern edge of what was then the Clandeboye Estate. To the north was a shelter belt of trees known as the Walmer Screen, and to the east a wooded area called Walmer Grove — both names referencing Walmer, a Cinque Port of which Lord Dufferin served as Warden. Correspondence from 1869 between Lord Dufferin and Mortimer Thomson concerning the allocation of estate cottages may relate to these buildings.

In the Annual Revisions from 1866 onwards, all the dwellings are leased from Lord Dufferin and Clandeboye and valued at £3 10s, with numerous changes of occupier and occasional vacancies typical of estate workers' housing. In 1874 the valuation was raised to £4, suggesting some improvements were made at that time. The architect responsible for the design is unknown, though both Benjamin Ferrey and William Henry Lynn were working with Lord Dufferin during the 1850s and 1860s and are considered possible candidates.

The terrace is captioned "Red Cottages" on the 1901 Ordnance Survey map, a reference to what appears to have been an original brick frontage. According to the estate office, the terrace was always known as "Red Row," while the now-rendered dwellings are today called Clandeboye Cottages. Each house originally had a front garden and a small plot to the rear for growing vegetables. The cottages were also originally designed with an open porch, which was enclosed by bringing the front doors forward prior to listing in 1973. A row of sheds running behind the cottages is shown on the 1858 map, confirming they are contemporary with the cottages themselves.

In 1985 extensive repairs and improvements were carried out, including replacement of internal doors and frames, replacement of floorboards, removal of kitchen units and partition walls, taking down and rebuilding chimneys, connecting the houses to sewers and electricity, and replacement of front and back doors. Gas heating has since been introduced and copper pipework is visible to the rear elevations.

Although the building has been modernised, its original architectural detailing survives and is integral to the group value and interest of the terrace as a whole. The cottages remain in the ownership of the Clandeboye Estate and are still, in many cases, occupied by estate workers or their descendants, giving a remarkable continuity of use stretching back to the time they were first built.