Walled garden (North), Dundarave Estate, Bushmills, County Antrim, BT57 8ST

Walled Garden (North), Dundarave Estate

This is the remains of a walled garden on the Dundarave Estate near Bushmills, County Antrim, built around 1846 and probably contemporaneous with the main house. It first appears as a completed structure on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1855. Although it has lost some key features, including its glasshouses, it retains important historic and cultural significance as part of the wider Dundarave estate group, and has group value with Dundarave House and its outbuildings.

Layout and Boundary Walls

The garden is oblong on plan with quadrant corners, and slopes gently upwards from west to east. Its high masonry boundary walls are faced externally in coursed rubble stone and internally in garden wall bond red brickwork. The copings are terracotta bowler-hat in profile, with roughly-formed stone quadrant copings at five-course changes of height. Square, inward-projecting brick piers with shallow stone pyramidal caps are spaced at approximately 23-metre intervals along the longer north and south sides. The west wall was breached at some point in the past to form an asymmetrically positioned main entrance with brick jambs and a pair of wrought-iron gates.

Paths and Planting

The paths were originally stone-cobbled with stone edgings. A continuous perimeter path runs parallel to and separated from the boundary walls by planting beds, interconnecting with cruciform paths laid on north-south and east-west axes. All evidence of the original planting plan has been lost, with the exception of a remnant orchard to the east.

Glasshouses and North Wall Structures

The remains of a former glasshouse survive centrally on the south side of the north wall. Only the ashlar stone stall risers remain. The glasshouse was oblong on plan, with lean-to flanking wings and a central canted projecting bay with a pitched roof that backed onto a gable rising above the boundary wall. This gable contained a central chimneystack serving a boiler house on the opposite, north, side of the wall. The north wall has regularly spaced high-level rectangular openings containing horizontally-pivoted timber ventilation panels set in timber frames. The wing wall heads have ashlar stone copings, terminating at the east and west ends with recumbent stone lions. Similar verge stones finish the central gable. To the east of the main glasshouse are the remains of two smaller contiguous greenhouses running perpendicular to the north wall.

Doorways

The south wall has a centrally located doorway with a flat rubbed brick arch. Its door is a timber-framed, vertically-braced and painted timber vertically-sheeted replacement, with galvanised strap hinges. In the north wall, between the main glasshouse and the greenhouses, there is an elliptically-headed doorway containing flat-headed painted timber-framed and vertically-sheeted double gates with a wicket in the east panel. Further west along the north wall, past the main glasshouse, there is another doorway with a square-headed brick arch, fitted with a painted timber-framed and vertically-sheeted door.

Lean-to Shed Ranges

Two lean-to shed ranges abut the north side of the north wall. The west range contains potting sheds and a boiler house, built in rubble stone walling with brick quoins and corbelled eaves. The natural slate roofs have largely collapsed, with a corrugated iron-roofed section to the east. The north elevation has elliptically-headed rubbed-brick arches to blind openings, containing square-headed painted timber three-over-six sash windows on stone sills and painted timber vertically-sheeted doors. The east range is similar in character but has a corrugated iron roof, eight-over-eight sash windows, and a four-pane fanlight over the door. A corrugated iron lean-to shed abuts the east gable of the east range.

Setting

The garden sits within a woodland setting, with estate paths to the north and west. A two-storey gardener's house abuts the north-east corner of the walled garden, and a farmyard lies to the north-east.

Historical Background

The present Dundarave House was built around 1846 to the designs of Sir Charles Lanyon, replacing an earlier mansion known as Bushmills House, which appeared on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832. That earlier house had been built in the early 19th century by Francis MacNaghten, who purchased the Bushmills estate in 1808 for a small price from his brothers-in-law, the Dunkins. Around 1830, MacNaghten had a new house constructed on the site, incorporating all or parts of the earlier building. This new mansion, described in the Townland Valuations of 1835, was a two-storey castellated structure with an apparent three-stage tower to the rear, extensive outbuildings to the west adorned with circular turrets, and a pair of walled or formalised gardens to the south.

Upon Francis MacNaghten's death in 1843, the estate passed to his son Edmund MacNaghten, who had been appointed Registrar of the Supreme Court, first in Madras and then in Calcutta, in his early twenties. The income from this position allowed Edmund to retire in 1825 at the age of 24 and return to Ireland. After inheriting the estate, he had the previous house demolished and replaced with the present mansion, thought to have been built between 1846 and 1849.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832 shows the area of the present north walled garden as already cleared, indicating that its development had been set in place before that date, though it is first shown as fully built on the second edition map of 1855. The earlier house was served by two large gardens to the south, and fragments of these earlier gardens remain evident in the landscape, particularly a trapezoidal walled garden to the far south. It is likely that the present north walled garden was laid out to serve the newly built mansion. The garden does not appear in the Valuation Records of 1862 to 1929, but by the early 20th century two additional buildings had been constructed along the north wall, as shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1904. The Annual Revisions records show that in 1929 a gardener's house was added, with a rateable value of £2 10s, likely the building now standing outside the north-east corner of the walled garden.

Modern map evidence shows that while the brick walls of the garden largely remain, the vegetation and buildings within the perimeter have been largely removed or have fallen into ruin. The estate was vacant and for sale in the early 21st century but has since been purchased and undergone refurbishment works.