15 Comber Road, Balloo, Killinchy, Co Down, BT23 6PB

15 Comber Road, Balloo, Killinchy — House, 1809

This is a prominently sited and largely intact two-storey Georgian vernacular house, built in 1809 and set at the junction of the Comber and Craigarusky Roads in the townland of Balloo, near Killinchy. It is a good example of a substantial house of its type, well preserved and with its original interior layout still very much in evidence.

Exterior

The house is large and sturdy looking, with a gabled roofline. The front, west-facing façade is deliberately asymmetrical. To the right of centre is a timber sheeted door with a semicircular spider-web fanlight above it, framed by reeded pilasters and an archivolt with keystone. Above the entrance is an inscribed panel reading "Built by David Lowry Anno Domini 1809". To the left of the front door is a sash window with Georgian panes — a type repeated throughout almost all the windows in the house — and to the far left is another doorway, now fitted with more recent partly glazed double doors. A further window sits to the right of the entrance doorway. At first floor level there are four smaller windows, largely evenly spaced. The south gable has a small window near centre at first floor level. The north gable is blank.

At the rear, slightly left of centre, is a small single-storey gabled return, which has a timber sheeted stable door and a six-pane window to its north façade. To the left of this return, on the ground floor of the main building, are two small windows with modern frames, largely obscured by creeping plant growth. To the right of the return is a sash window with horizontal glazing bars, and to the far right a timber sheeted and glazed door with a narrow fanlight. At first floor level at the rear there are four windows, matching the front, though the second from the left is set at a slightly lower level.

The front façade, south gable, and part of the north gable are finished in salt-and-pepper pebbledash with recent decorative smooth cement surrounds to the openings, except at the entrance. The rear and part of the north gable are finished in roughcast. The roof is covered in Bangor blue slates and has four rendered chimney stacks with stone parapets. The third chimney stack from the left is a dummy, added for the sake of visual symmetry, even though the main entrance and one of the ground-floor windows do not align directly beneath the upper windows. Rainwater goods are PVC. A large archway to the north was added around the 1920s.

Construction and Materials

Renovation and restoration work carried out in 1987 revealed that both internal and external walls are two feet thick, built from random boulder and rubble, with the exception of partition walls in the bathroom area. Examination of the roof structure revealed a butt purlin construction, with purlins supported by two transverse walls and a central jointed truss — a form consistent with an 1809 date, as identified by Dr P. Robinson of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. The slates on the main roof are regular-shaped Bangor blues, while those on the rear extension are irregular in shape but graded in size, from a local quarry at Tullycavy.

Interior

The house has six rooms upstairs and five downstairs, plus one room now partitioned to form a bathroom, toilet, and cloakroom. During near-complete removal of internal plaster in 1987, the house showed little sign of major alteration throughout most of its fabric. The quirky Georgian internal layout remains very much in evidence. The exceptions were in the downstairs rooms. The kitchen fireplace showed signs of more than one phase of alteration, incorporating bricks marked "Castle Espie" as well as more modern concrete blocks; the Castle Espie Pottery operated between 1852 and 1867 on the shore of Strangford Lough, approximately five miles away. In the room adjoining the kitchen, a blocked-up doorway and window were revealed during work, with a wooden lintel above them; these had been positioned between the present window and the main front entrance. In the 1940s the bathroom area was converted from what had previously been a dining room. The conclusion drawn from the 1987 investigation is that the main body of the house was built as a new dwelling in 1809, with no evidence that the roof was raised to enlarge an earlier single-storey building, and that any alterations made since have been relatively minor.

The Rear Extension

The small single-storey extension at the rear, which in 1986 was divided into a scullery and a stone-flagged store, appears to have been added onto the main house — it cuts across both a kitchen window and a landing window — but it is already visible on the First Ordnance Survey map of 1834 and on an estate map of 1896, indicating it was added very early in the building's life. It does not appear to be original to 1809.

Historical Background

The house was built, as the date panel above the door records, by David Lowry in 1809. A gravestone above a vault in the Killinchy Church of Ireland graveyard records the family: David Lowry died 29th August 1829 aged 67, and his wife Margaret died 12th May 1856 aged 84. Their daughter Elizabeth, wife of John Stewart, died 3rd June 1861 aged 50; John Stewart himself died 10th September 1877 aged 67. Another daughter, Mary Lowry, died 5th July 1878 aged 69. Two grandsons are also recorded: David Lowry Tedford, who died 21st September 1838 aged two, and John Stewart, who died 14th February 1855 aged fourteen months.

Property records show the house was transferred by deed from Margaret Lowry to John Coulter in May 1852. On 2nd July 1887 it was transferred by mortgage from John Coulter to the Misses Sarah, Martha, and Margaret Coulter, endorsed in a transfer dated 23rd December 1888. By an assignment of 23rd December 1895 the property passed from Margaret Prentice to Samuel Prentice. It was first registered under the Irish Land Act of 1903 in the name of Samuel Prentice on 11th July 1904. Griffith's Valuation of 1863 records that John Coulter Junior also held a miller's house, corn and flax mills, offices, and land on the west side of the Killyleagh to Comber Road, with John Coulter Senior holding property elsewhere in the same townland. Samuel Prentice is listed as a farmer in Kelly's Directory of Ireland of 1905. At some point, either under the Coulter or Prentice families, the house was used as a spirit grocery. The property was sold on 15th March 1923 to William Mulholland, a merchant of 317 Albertbridge Road, Belfast. William died in 1948 leaving the property to his son William Hugh Carson Mulholland. The large archway and gate into the courtyard to the north were added by the Mulholland family after the 1920s, and much of the planting and garden work was also carried out by them. The house continues to be known locally as "Mr. Mulholland's house". The property was sold to Terence McClure in 1982 and subsequently to Brian Scott and Lesley Simpson in 1986.

Among items found behind an old wooden dresser in the kitchen during the 1987 works were six old postcards: four addressed to Miss Rosyl Rosann Spratt, care of Samuel Prentice, Balloo; a fifth to Miss E. Prentice, Balloo House; and a sixth to Miss Coulter, Ballyminstra, dated 24th April 1915.

The house appears on the Ordnance Survey maps of 1834 and 1859–60 in essentially the same form as it stands today.