Malone Golf Club former Stables and Outbuildings, 240 Upper Malone Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT17 9LB

Former Stables and Outbuildings, now Malone Golf Club Facilities 240 Upper Malone Road, Belfast

This is a courtyard complex of two-storey coach and stable buildings, built around 1835 as part of the redevelopment of Ballydrain House, and now serving as the club facilities of Malone Golf Club. It sits within the extensive grounds of the club on the east side of the Upper Malone Road, directly east of the main clubhouse — the former Ballydrain House itself — to which it is now connected by a series of modern extensions.

The complex is square on plan, arranged around a central courtyard, with late 20th-century additions abutting the north and east sides. It is constructed in rubblestone basalt with red brick quoins and brick dressings — a relatively functional but well-built example of its type. The roofs are pitched and hipped, finished in natural slate with hog-back ridge tiles. A single reconstructed grey brick chimney stack sits at the south-west corner. Rainwater goods are replacement uPVC, mounted on a projecting red brick eaves course.

Window openings are generally segmental-headed, with red brick block-and-start surrounds and projecting painted masonry sills. The windows themselves are mostly replacement painted timber top-hung casements, with some modern metal-framed casements and a small number of louvred openings. Door openings are also generally segmental-headed with red brick block-and-start surrounds. Two segmental-headed carriage arches at the south-east and north-east corners are fitted with replacement double-leaf braced and planked timber doors.

The main external elevation faces south, presenting a series of high-level ground floor openings with a variety of window types, including one surviving original multi-pane timber window. The openings at each end of both floors have been inappropriately replaced. A coach arch sits to the right of this elevation. The east elevation has a replacement ground floor door opening and a single first-floor window. It is abutted at its far right by a large metal shed. The north elevation has door and window openings to the west that have been closed up with modern blockwork, and its right side has been limewashed. The west elevation is abutted by a taller range that projects to the south-west.

Internally, openings are irregularly arranged throughout. Several courtyard-facing doors have been widened, and a number of first-floor window openings have been infilled with red brick. At the north-east corner, a brick wall with a rectangular opening partially spans the space to create a covered store. To the north, an arcaded block survives, with rubblestone basalt walling, red brick piers and basket-handled arches, though its openings have been closed with modern blockwork. The courtyard surface is finished in modern concrete slabs.

The setting retains something of its original character. The entrance from the Upper Malone Road is flanked by replacement quarry-faced basalt walls with rubblestone basalt copings and circular-plan gate piers, though two original ashlar sandstone gate piers have been retained just east of the modern entrance. The approach is via a long, tree-lined tarmac driveway. The site slopes gently to the west toward the main clubhouse. The former walled garden and gardener's cottage lie to the south and form part of the same historic complex.

The current Ballydrain House was built around 1835, replacing an earlier house, to designs by Edward Blore — the antiquarian and architect best known for his work on Buckingham Palace following the dismissal of John Nash, and on Lambeth Palace. Blore carried out a limited amount of work in Ulster during the 1830s, including Crom Castle and its boathouse in County Fermanagh. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832 shows the original house positioned to the south-west of the current building.

The house and lands had belonged to farmers and linen merchants, the Stewart family, before being purchased around 1835 by Hugh Montgomery, a director of the Northern Bank and son of one of the bank's founders. Montgomery demolished the old house and commissioned Blore to design a new one, which was completed around 1843. The house was extensively remodelled in the 1880s to designs by Thomas Drew and W. H. Lynn. Isabella Montgomery, the last of the Montgomery family to reside there, died in 1917, passing the house to her late husband Thomas's nephew, Hugh Montgomery. Hugh sold the house for £18,000, and it remained in private ownership — though briefly occupied by American and British forces between 1943 and 1945 — until 1961, when Malone Golf Club purchased it for £90,000.

Malone Golf Club was established in 1895 and was originally located in Stranmillis. It subsequently moved to the Harberton estate around 1915 — possibly the site now occupied by Balmoral Golf Club — before relocating to the Ballydrain estate following a fire in the clubhouse in the late 1950s.

The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1859 shows a complex of stables and outbuildings to the east of the house, arranged around a courtyard, with an L-shaped block to the north. According to Hugh Crawford's 1976 history of Ballydrain House, the complex comprised a large coach house and harness room formed by the four blocks enclosing the central courtyard, together with several horse stalls and loose boxes in the L-shaped northern block. Crawford also records that a farmyard was located further to the east, of which no trace now remains.

Despite the historic associations of the demesne with the Stewart family, and the architectural significance of the wider Ballydrain estate, the stable complex has undergone numerous incremental and inappropriate alterations and additions over the years — both historic and modern — resulting in substantial loss of original fabric and character. A flat-roofed late 20th-century infill block in stretcher-bonded red brick occupies the north-east corner, and the first-floor masonry at the south-west corner has been replaced in grey engineering brick. The stable yard's development has been largely undocumented and ad hoc. Although the overall form of the courtyard complex remains intact and it is representative of the concentrated period of grand house and demesne development in the Lagan Valley during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the extent of alteration and loss means the buildings do not meet the criteria for statutory listing.