Flowerfield House, 185 Coleraine Road, Portstewart, Co. Londonderry, BT55 7HU

Flowerfield House is a former dwelling of around 1860, now operating as an exhibition and arts centre, situated on the east side of Coleraine Road to the south of Portstewart town centre. It is an extensively restored, symmetrical, two-storey-over-basement, three-bay detached building, now joined to a large modern extension to the rear.

The building sits on an L-shaped plan. The roof has been re-covered in natural slate with blue-black angled ridge tiles, and the chimneystacks, positioned centrally on the ridgeline, have been replaced in render. Rainwater goods are plastic, fixed to projecting eaves with sheeted soffits and fascia. The external walls are finished in painted ruled-and-lined render. Windows are replacement 6-over-6 timber-framed sash with projecting painted sills.

The principal elevation faces southwest and is symmetrically arranged with five openings at each floor level, those in the side bays being more closely spaced than the central ones. At the centre of this elevation, a square-headed doorcase is reached via a stone bridge over a basement channel, fitted with modern metal railings. The door itself is a raised-and-fielded four-panel timber door with a brass knocker and transom light above, flanked by pilaster jambs and surmounted by a corniced canopy on scrolled console brackets, though the canopy is not original to the building.

The northwest elevation is partially abutted at its far left by the modern extension. It has four evenly spaced windows at both ground and first floor levels. Towards the far left is a modern casement window, set slightly below first floor level, and a modern double-leaf glazed timber door at ground floor, accessed by a modern timber walkway. The basement on this elevation has two windows and a modern timber-sheeted door to the left. The northeast rear elevation is almost entirely concealed by the large two-storey modern extension, built in 2003 to designs by Consarc Partnership; a single window remains visible at first floor level to the left. The southeast elevation is two windows wide at each floor.

The Victorian building has been substantially altered, with much replacement fabric and a fully refurbished interior, though it retains its essential proportions and character. The award-winning modern extension is considered to be of high quality in its design and has been successfully integrated with the original house to create a public arts centre.

The house stands within a large, mature site, accessed from Coleraine Road by a long tarmacadamed avenue leading to a rear car park. There is a landscaped garden to the front with a children's play area to the north side. Flagstones are laid to the front of the house, and the basement area is enclosed by modern metal railings. The principal entrance is now located within the rear extension, which dominates the view from the back of the site and is visible to either side of the original house when approached from the southwest.

The history of the site stretches back considerably further than the present building. An earlier house dating from 1710 stood here and was described in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs as a plain house devoid of ornament. The land was associated with the Kerr and O'Neill families: the Kerrs were Scots who arrived in the area during the Plantation period, and the first recorded owner was Robert Kerr, whose son David was killed during the revolution of 1688. Robert's daughter Hester married Felix O'Neill, and the property subsequently passed to Mark Kerr O'Neill and then to his son, also Mark Kerr O'Neill, who died in 1818 and is buried in Ballyaghran old churchyard opposite Flowerfield. On his death he bequeathed £50 to the poor of the parish, though the bequest was disputed by his heirs.

The earlier house had a number of notable associations. In the 1760s it is recorded as having given temporary refuge to the figure known as "Half Hanged MacNaghten", a convicted murderer and popular hero whose execution was briefly interrupted when the rope broke, and who is said to have hidden from pursuing soldiers by concealing himself beneath the skirts of one of the ladies present in the drawing room. During the unrest of 1772 in which the "Hearts of Steel" were active, a resident, Mrs Eliza O'Neill, wrote to her mother describing conditions at the house under a state of siege: "We have bags of sand nailed up in most of the windows to keep out their balls and plenty of charges ready made in paper to charge the faster and six guns always ready."

By the time of the Townland Valuation of 1828 to 1840, the property — recorded as "Flower Field" on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 — was valued at £15 6 shillings and was held by Samuel Orr, a prosperous gentleman farmer who also owned property in Marylebone, London. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 to 1864 assessed the property at £35, a figure likely to reflect the newly built house, even though it is the older building that appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1856. Samuel Orr leased the property from William Wilson Campbell and Alexander Shuldham, and it is believed to have been Orr who commissioned the present house around 1860. He died in 1869. The house was subsequently occupied by Major Alexander Shuldham from County Longford, who died in 1876, after which it was purchased by Edward Hay Junior for £4,500 and let to a succession of tenants. At the time of the 1911 census, the occupant was Susanna Baritta Moore, an English widow living on dividends, who employed a general domestic servant. The twelve-room house was assessed as first class.

Charles and Muriel Munro rented the house from 1922, and in the years following the Second World War it was visited by the novelist and artist Joyce Cary (1888–1957), a relative of the Munro family. Cary's most celebrated work, The Horse's Mouth, was adapted into a successful film starring Alec Guinness. Muriel Munro continued to live at the house until 1962, after which it stood vacant until it was acquired by Coleraine Borough Council in 1973, by which time it had become completely derelict. It reopened in 1980 as the first arts centre in Northern Ireland. For some years after this, the remains of the earlier 1710 house remained on the site behind the building, but these, along with the former outbuildings, have since been demolished. In 2002 to 2003, a large extension was added to the rear and the interior of the main house was reworked to provide gallery space and administration offices.