Kilwarlin Manse, 49 Kilwarlin Road, Hillsborough, Co. Down, BT26 6DZ

Kilwarlin Manse is an attached two-storey cement-rendered manse dated 1834, forming part of the Kilwarlin Moravian Church complex alongside the adjoining Church and Hall. It sits on the south side of Kilwarlin Road, facing north, set within a mature landscape accessed via a winding avenue from a decorative gate screen on the road. The building is rectangular on plan with a lean-to entrance wing and a gabled entrance porch to the front. It was extensively refurbished in 1987.

The roofs are pitched and covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, and rendered chimneystacks rise from either gable end of the western section, with a further rendered stack to the east. Cast-iron guttering on iron brackets feeds into cast-iron downpipes fixed to timber box fascias. The front and main body of the house is finished in ruled and lined cement render with rusticated render quoins — a formal treatment that sits alongside more vernacular elements elsewhere on the building, a combination thought to reflect the personal idiosyncrasies of its builder rather than any particular architectural style or period.

The front (north) elevation is four windows wide. The western half rises to a taller roof and is adjoined by the single-storey lean-to entrance wing with its gabled porch; the eastern half shares its roofline with the Church Hall. First-floor windows are square-headed with masonry sills — painted slate to the eastern section — and replacement 6/6 timber sash windows. Ground-floor windows are round-arched, set within round-arched recesses, with painted masonry sills and replacement 3/6 timber sash windows incorporating fanlights. The projecting gabled entrance porch has roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles and a terracotta finial, with exposed rafter feet and plastic guttering. Its squat round-headed door opening is set within a round-arched recess and contains a vertically-sheeted timber door flanked by a pair of rendered piers with impost mouldings, opening onto two granite steps.

The rear (south) elevation is also four windows wide. The western half is abutted by a single-bay two-storey projection with a pyramidal slate roof and a decorative corona finial. The eastern half is abutted by a single-storey lean-to, which in turn adjoins the return to the Hall. Walling to the rear is in rough-cast lime render, with redbrick used on the two-storey projection. Rear windows are square-headed with masonry sills and replacement 6/6 timber sash windows with exposed sash boxes. The projection has a large square-headed door opening with a vertically-sheeted timber door. The west side elevation abuts the Moravian Church, and the east side elevation abuts the Church Hall.

The manse was built as part of a wholesale reconstruction of the Kilwarlin Moravian site undertaken by the Reverend Basil Zula, who arrived at Kilwarlin in 1834 and carried out the work at his own expense. Zula was a Greek exile, having fled his native Greece following the Greek War of Independence of 1821 to 1830, and he settled in Ireland carrying a persistent fear that his enemies might pursue him. According to Bishop Foy, this fear directly shaped the design of the manse. Zula reportedly incorporated a number of escape routes into the building: an upper room supported on columns contained a trap door providing quick access to the outside, and the building was also fitted with two staircases and a notable number of double doors, apparently intended to hinder any attempt to capture him. The raised room no longer survives, though it has been observed that the manse remains, beyond dispute, a house with an extraordinary number of doors.

The site's history before Zula's arrival is only partially documented. The first edition Ordnance Survey map records two major buildings on the site, founded by John Cennick in 1755, though only the church is named. The 1834 Townland Valuations list a single entry — "Moravian House" — valued at £3 15s, and it is unclear whether this refers to the church itself or an earlier manse building. Griffith's Valuation records the manse at £13 10s, a value it retained through to the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930. Between 1864 and 1930, at least eleven Moravian ministers occupied the house in succession. Zula himself died in 1844, after which his widow Anne continued to live in the manse and used her late husband's money to construct an extension which she ran as a boarding school for select young ladies until her own death in 1858. In 1962 the manse was occupied by Bishop J. H. Foy, who wrote a visitor's guide to Kilwarlin Moravian Church recording Zula's history and the broader story of the Moravian Church in Ireland.