The Rectory, St. Elizabeth's Court, Ballyregan Road, Dundonald, Belfast, County Down, BT16 1HX

The Rectory, now known as St Elizabeth's Court, is a former Church of Ireland rectory built in 1819, standing on an elevated, landscaped site to the west of Ballyregan Road and to the north of Upper Newtownards Road in Dundonald. It is a detached, symmetrical, rendered building of two storeys and three bays, rectangular in plan and facing south, designed in a Palladian manner with single-storey wings projecting from each side elevation and terminating in gabled pavilion blocks. The east pavilion was rebuilt around 1990. The building is of architectural interest for its style, proportion, and ornamentation, and carries group value alongside the nearby Cleland Memorial, which commemorates the Reverend Andrew Cleland (1851–1880), a rector of this parish who lived here.

The roof is covered in natural slate with concrete ridge tiles, and is hipped in form. There are two rebuilt rendered chimneystacks fitted with octagonal clay pots. Rainwater goods consist of replacement cast-iron guttering on iron brackets with cast-iron downpipes. The external walls are finished in dry-dash cement render with a painted projecting plinth course and a painted continuous sill course at first-floor level. Window openings are square-headed with painted masonry sills and fitted with replacement six-over-six timber sash windows throughout.

The principal south-facing elevation is symmetrical across three bays. At its centre is a round-headed door opening with a Doric doorcase, comprising a flush-panelled replacement timber door flanked by a pair of engaged timber Doric columns rising to a lintel cornice, with a spoked fanlight above. The door opens onto a concrete-paved front area. The west side elevation is two windows wide and is abutted by a single-storey, single-bay wing with a single-pitched roof, which terminates in a single-storey, single-bay gabled pavilion block. This pavilion is detailed to match the principal block and features a single round-headed window opening with a replacement six-over-six timber sash window and a simple pediment, while its roof is hipped to the rear and carries a tall rendered chimneystack. The east side elevation mirrors the west but was entirely rebuilt around 1990. The rear elevation is abutted by a two-storey return connecting the principal block to a modern H-plan residential development behind.

The building was extensively renovated around 1990 and converted for use as a residential care home by D. W. Boyd and Company of the Ormeau Road, Belfast, operating as the Church of Ireland Housing Association (NI) Ltd. Much of the surrounding curtilage has since been developed with a mixture of single-storey and two-storey units. Despite these alterations and additions to the rear — which detract from the original building's character and setting — the rectory remains an important building in the local area.

The site is accessed via a tarmac driveway from Ballyregan Road to the east. The house is enclosed to the rear and sides by the H-plan residential development, with further single-storey units within the grounds. To the front there are landscaped gardens reached via a flight of concrete steps, along with a garden pavilion erected around 1990.

The rectory was built in 1819 at a cost of £830 for Dundonald parish, an ancient parish recorded as early as the 1306 taxation. The old church of Dundonald dates from 1771 and was dedicated to St Elizabeth of Hungary. Construction was funded by a gift of £300 and a loan of £500 from the Board of First Fruits, leaving the incumbent, the Reverend Dillon, out of pocket; vestry minutes record that erecting outbuildings and making other improvements cost "nearly £400 sterling, at the sole expense of the incumbent." The building appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834 captioned "Glebe Ho[use]", and its plan form at that time was essentially as it is today — a rectangular central house flanked by two single-storey pavilions.

The Townland Valuation of 1824–40 records the Reverend Roger Moore Dillon in residence, rector from 1810 to 1851. The house is described as being of cut stone, more than twenty years old and "well circumstanced." Recorded dimensions describe a two-storey house with single and one-and-a-half-storey additions and a back porch. Outbuildings at that time included a "gig and car house," a potato house, and a piggery, with the total valuation recorded as £22 10s.

The Reverend Andrew Cleland succeeded Dillon as rector from 1851 to 1880 and is listed in Griffith's Valuation as freeholder of the property. At that time the house stood in over twelve acres of land and was valued at £36, later reduced to £35. Subsequent occupants changed with each incumbency. The Reverend Arthur Thomas Farrell — son of the architect William Farrell — was resident from 1883, followed by the Reverend Robert White from 1892. White, who was born in County Tyrone, was resident at the time of both the 1901 and 1911 censuses, living in the house with his wife and several adult children. Of the couple's ten children, only seven survived to adulthood. His eldest son, Robert Haldane White, later became Rector of Holy Trinity in Belfast. His eldest daughter, Agnes Romilly White (1872–1945), drew on her experiences of growing up as a rector's daughter in what was then a village near the city to write two novels: Gape Row (1934) and Mrs Murphy Buries the Hatchet (1936). She is noted for her "sensitive pastoral awareness of poverty and bereavement as well as of human comedy." Later rectors included Joseph Grundy Burton (from 1914), the Reverend John Beresford Cotter (from 1927), and the Reverend Thomas Herbert Frizelle from 1951, who was responsible for building the present Dundonald church, completed in 1966. A new rectory has since been built on glebe land just to the south of St Elizabeth's Court.

During the 19th century the rectory stood outside the village of Dundonald in largely rural and agricultural surroundings. It was only in the latter part of the 20th century that suburban development extended as far as Dundonald and engulfed much of the glebe land on which the rectory once stood.