Gardeners Cottage and Walled Garden, Malone Golf Club, 240 Upper Malone Road, Belfast, Co Antrim BT17 9LB

Gardener's Cottage and Walled Garden, Malone Golf Club

This is the roofless, substantially overgrown remains of a Tudor Revival style gardener's cottage, built around 1835, attached to the north-east corner of the former walled garden of Ballydrain House — now the clubhouse of Malone Golf Club. Despite its derelict state, the cottage is symmetrically arranged and shows evidence of an assured designer's hand. It is considered consistent in style with the main house, which is a relatively rare Ulster work by Edward Blore, the architect responsible for completing Buckingham Palace following the dismissal of John Nash, and also known for his work at Lambeth Palace. The quality of the cottage is somewhat diminished by the loss of its internal features, hipped roof and central chimneystack. The once-prolific walled garden, described by former owner Hugh Montgomery in his history of the house, has also been altered for use as a bowling green, with loss of associated garden structures including the glasshouses. Nonetheless, the likely authorship of the cottage, its contribution to the functional context and historic setting of the wider demesne, and the remains of the walled garden together provide an important reminder of this building type.

Architecture

The cottage is a square-plan, single-storey structure with an attic, three bays wide and symmetrically arranged on all elevations. The roof is now missing entirely; a survey photograph dated May 1984 recorded a hipped natural slate roof with a gabled dormer positioned off-centre on the east side. There are no rainwater goods remaining, though the projecting ashlar sandstone eaves course is still in place. Walls are of quarry-faced basalt rubble laid to regular courses, with ashlar sandstone quoins and a plinth course. Window openings are square-headed and bipartite, with ashlar sandstone block-and-start surrounds, flush chamfered sandstone sills, moulded sandstone mullions and label moulds. Remains of 4/4 timber sliding sash windows survive.

The principal elevation faces east and is symmetrically arranged, with windows evenly spaced either side of a square-headed entrance doorway, which has an ashlar sandstone block-and-start surround and label mould; the door itself is missing. The south elevation is blank apart from toothed quoins on the east side. The north elevation has a single window centred on the wall, which, although largely overgrown, appears to have the same surround as those on the east elevation. The west elevation is enclosed by a small walled yard, which was not accessed during survey. The entrance to this yard is segmental-headed with a red brick toothed surround and a replacement timber boarded door. The yard wall projects from the north face of the walled garden, close to the main entrance to the garden.

The walled garden has external rubble basalt walling lined internally with red brick laid to English garden wall bond, with tooled sandstone coping. To the south-east, a portion of the external face is also in red brick, with a curved stepped coping. There is a square-headed door opening to the north-east, with a painted metal lintel and a replacement sliding timber framed and planked door. On the external face of the north wall there are remains of an abutment, including a partially demolished wall and an infilled door opening with a timber lintel and a segmental red brick relieving arch over.

Materials: walls of basalt rubble and sandstone; roof originally natural slate (now missing); rainwater goods missing; vestigial timber framed sliding sash windows, single glazed with multi-paned sashes to the east elevation.

Historical Background

Ballydrain House was built around 1835, replacing an earlier house on the same estate. The first edition Ordnance Survey map shows the original house situated to the south-west of the current building. The estate was owned by the Stewart family, farmers and linen merchants, 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 Edward Blore to design a new one in the Tudor Revival style; the house was completed around 1843. Blore completed a limited body of work in Ulster during the 1830s, including Crom Castle and Boathouse in County Fermanagh. The stylistic consistency between the main house and the gardener's cottage strongly suggests that the cottage was also designed by Blore. Historic photographs confirm that the roof was originally hipped and pitched, with a tall, centrally located chimneystack.

The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1859 shows a walled garden established to the south-west of the house, used to cultivate fruit and vegetables, with some beds dedicated to flowers for the house. A plan of the demesne dated 1843 records a formally laid-out garden with entrances centrally positioned in the east, south and west walls, and a large structure along the north wall with entrances to the east and west. Hugh Crawford's History of Ballydrain House, written in 1976, describes three glasshouses along one side of the garden, the central one domed and used for cultivating exotic plants — likely the extensive structure visible on the 1843 map. This structure is still shown on the fifth edition Ordnance Survey map, suggesting it was demolished shortly after Malone Golf Club purchased the estate in the early 1960s. Crawford also describes a range of small structures or sheds within the garden for growing grapes and peaches, traces of several of which survive abutting the internal face of the walls, particularly to the west; orange and apple trees were arranged around the garden's perimeter. The other garden entrances have been removed, with the exception of that to the east of the north wall, which appears to have been widened.

Isabella Montgomery, the last of the Montgomery family to live at Ballydrain, died in 1917, passing the house to Hugh Montgomery, nephew of her late husband Thomas. Hugh sold the house for £18,000. It remained in private ownership — briefly occupied by the army from 1943 to 1945 — until 1961, when it was purchased by Malone Golf Club for £90,000. Malone Golf Club had been established in 1895, originally located in Stranmillis, before moving to the Harberton estate around 1915 (possibly the current site of Balmoral Golf Club). Following a fire in the clubhouse in the late 1950s, the club decided to relocate to the Ballydrain estate. Around 1961, the interior of the walled garden was converted into tennis courts and subsequently into a bowling green.

A photograph of around 1975 provided by the Golf Club shows that the cottage at that time still had its pitched and hipped roof, along with a single tall Tudor chimneystack similar to those on the main house, which were removed by the Golf Club around 1961. Photographs taken at the time of the first survey around 1986 show that the chimneystack had been removed and, while the roof was still in place, the cottage was already in an advanced state of dereliction.

Setting

The cottage and walled garden are set in the southern portion of the former demesne, now surrounded by the golf course and substantially screened by mature trees. A car park lies to the north, and late 20th century groundskeepers' sheds are located immediately to the west.