Bronte Memorial House, Bronte Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 5BS

The Bronte Memorial House is the ruined remains of a two-roomed single-storey vernacular cottage located at Imdel Towland on the Bronte Road, south-east of Banbridge. Built between 1760 and 1779, it stands as the reputed birthplace of Patrick Brontë, father of the celebrated literary figures Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë.

The building comprises rubble greystone walls approximately 0.5 metres thick, rising to a maximum height of 1.5 metres. Two rooms are enclosed: one measuring roughly 3 by 1.5 metres and the other 3 by 2 metres. The entrance is positioned on the north-east elevation. The floor has been paved, and a bronze plaque mounted on a rear corner rock records that Patrick Brontë was born here on 17th March 1777.

The cottage was originally built by Hugh Brontë, who was born in 1757 and died in 1808. Hugh had eloped with Alice McClory, a Roman Catholic, and they married at Magherally Old Church before settling at Emdale. Patrick was born in 1777 and was the first of ten children. When the family grew, Hugh moved his young family back to the townland of Lisnacreevy around 1779, leaving the cottage to be occupied by other tenants. Patrick went on to become a schoolmaster and then an ordained minister. He married Maria Branwell and fathered five daughters and one son, including Anne, Emily and Charlotte, all of whom became renowned authors before their early deaths. Patrick himself died in 1861.

The cottage appeared on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833. By Griffith's Valuation of 1862, it was still occupied, by then by William Colgan, a farm labourer employed at a neighbouring farm owned by Robert Nesbitt. The Brontë family had vacated the site by that time; Patrick's brothers James and Welsh Brontë had settled in the townland of Ballynaskeagh further north. Successive occupants included Alexander Dodds from 1873 and Joseph McAlister in 1886, but in that year the house was demolished. It has remained a ruin since then.

In the late 1930s the Ulster Tourist Development Association initiated steps to preserve the site. Photographs published in the Belfast Newsletter in 1937 show the cottage had already fallen into its current ruinous state, with only a few walls standing, though the original layout was still discernible. Since 1956 the site has been cared for by the Bronte Homeland Trust.

The ruins occupy a rural setting close to a crossroads, set alongside the road with a rectangular stone-paved forecourt to the north-east, enclosed by metal railings on a concrete plinth wall and accessed by a gate. A rubble stone well is located on the opposite side of the road. A modern information board installed outside details the history of the Brontë family in the area.

Although the site is part of a group of structures of international literary significance related to the Brontë family, insufficient historic fabric survives for the building to meet the statutory and policy tests for listing as a structure of special architectural or historic interest. It was delisted on 8th November 2019.