Kilwarlin House, 129 Moira Road, Hillsborough, Co. Down, BT26 6JW

Kilwarlin House is a detached symmetrical two-storey three-bay redbrick house built in 1860, situated on the south side of Moira Road at its junction with Artifinny Road in Hillsborough. The building is T-shaped on plan, facing north, with a lower gable-ended two-storey redbrick return to the rear and a pair of lean-to accretions extending further back. The property sits within an enclosed front garden with driveway leading to a yard and range of redbrick outbuildings to the west. North of the yard, fronting onto the road, stands a development of single-storey holiday cottages built around 2000, arranged around an enclosed gravel forecourt.

The main house has a hipped natural slate roof pitched to the return, with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles and lead to hips, served by two redbrick chimneystacks. Cast-iron guttering on iron brackets sits on the redbrick eaves course, with cast-iron downpipes. The redbrick walling is laid in Flemish bond with lime pointing throughout.

The symmetrical principal north elevation is five windows wide, featuring square-headed window openings with rendered reveals and painted sandstone sills containing 2/2 timber sash windows with horizontally-glazed panes and some cylinder glass. A central elliptical-headed door opening with rendered reveals contains a tripartite wood-grained timber doorcase. The timber panelled door has six flat panels and off-centre iron door furniture, flanked by a pair of plain sidelights, each flanked by slender panelled pilasters supporting a lintel cornice and plain fanlight of three panes. The door opens onto a sandstone step within the front garden.

The east side elevation is cement rendered with two windows to the ground floor and one to the first floor. The south rear elevation is abutted at its centre by the gable-ended two-storey redbrick return, with a single-storey lean-to extending from the east pitch (dating to circa 1950) and a rear entrance porch to the west side. The west side elevation has a single window to each floor.

The return section contains varied fenestration: its east elevation has a single-pane timber sash window to the first floor with brick sill, and a pair of early 6/6 timber sash windows to the ground floor. The gable end has a further single-pane timber sash window to the first floor, abutted by a single-storey accretion with corrugated iron roof and steel windows. To the west side of the return is an early 3/3 timber sash window to the first floor, a 6/3 window to the ground floor, and a further horizontally-glazed 2/2 window adjacent to a glazed timber door. The rear entrance porch features a large timber casement window and a glazed hardwood panelled door.

The yard behind opens from the rear porch and is paved in bitmac, with a mature lime tree encased in a rendered wall at its centre. The yard is enclosed to the south by a 1½-storey redbrick outhouse with timber shutters and doors beneath a pitched natural slate roof, abutted by an open-fronted outbuilding with corrugated iron roof and redbrick lean-to to its rear. The north of the yard is enclosed by the rear elevation of the single-storey rendered range of holiday cottages, themselves enclosed to the road by a rendered wall.

The front garden is enclosed by decorative iron railings on a low rendered wall, with a matching pedestrian gate opening onto the driveway and a further gate opening onto the road, both mounted on redbrick piers.