Rockfield, 29 Greengraves Road, Dundonald, County Down, BT16 1UZ

Rockfield is a two-and-a-half-storey, five-bay Georgian country house built between 1795 and 1800, constructed as the family home of Adam McClean, a Belfast merchant. It stands at the end of a long, curving, wooded driveway off the north side of Greengraves Road, east of Dundonald, and is screened from public view by the surrounding landscape. The house is now vacant and partially derelict, having most recently been used as a nursing home.

The building has a rectangular plan form with numerous historic and modern additions to the sides and rear. It is finished in painted roughcast render beneath a hipped natural slate roof with leaded ridges and hips. A diminutive leaded parapet, partially removed in places, sits above a moulded cornice at eaves level. Gutters are concealed behind the parapet and are leaded, though the hoppers and downpipes have been replaced in uPVC. The chimney stacks are rendered and currently have no pots.

The principal elevation faces east and is symmetrically arranged. At its centre is an Ionic portico with smooth columns rising to a full entablature, surmounted by a decorative iron railing. The portico has been infilled with a modern door and side panels and is approached via stone steps fitted with modern handrails. The front door itself is wide timber with bolection-moulded lower panels, a glazed upper panel with side lights, and a half-circle batwing fanlight above. The entrance is flanked by two windows on each side at ground floor level, with five windows to the first floor directly above the ground floor openings. A pediment over the central bay carries a moulded coping and a central oculus with moulded surrounds. To the left of the portico is a modern ramped access ramp with timber railing. The windows throughout are one-over-one timber sliding box sash windows with horns, generally boarded over, set above painted masonry cills.

The north elevation is blank and is abutted on the left by a historic two-storey, two-bay gable-ended wing, which in turn is significantly extended to the north by a single-storey-over-basement modern nursing home addition. The east face of this two-storey wing is further abutted by a single-storey lean-to extension dating from around 1960. The rear elevation also faces east and is symmetrically arranged, largely echoing the principal front elevation. It is abutted centrally by a subservient two-storey hipped return featuring round-headed casement windows and high-level horizontal rectangular windows. Two steel-framed bipartite roof lights serve the rear, though the right-hand one has been removed. The south elevation is asymmetrically arranged, with bipartite timber glazed windows to the left side of both ground and first floors. To the right, a single-storey extension with a lean-to roof set against a parapet, dating from around 1960, abuts the main house.

Internally, alterations carried out to adapt the building as a nursing home have affected the original arrangement, but some high-quality detailing survives intact.

The setting retains considerable character. A single-storey hipped-roof gate lodge dating from around 1850 stands at the entrance to the driveway. To the front of the house is a sloping lawn; to the rear is a large yard accessed through substantial gated sandstone piers, though the original gates have been replaced. The rear yard is partially enclosed by the walls of the former gardens to the east, within which an original arched gate opening is preserved. The outbuildings to the rear have been converted to residential use and the northern block replaced with modern apartments. Adjoining the house to the north is a large residential home, also now vacant, and various modern outbuildings are located to the south. Beyond the immediate grounds lies open rural landscape and wooded areas. Several scheduled monuments lie in close proximity to Rockfield: a medieval church and graveyard (DOW005:033), a holy well (DOW005:044), the Kempe Stones (DOW005:028), and an Anglo-Norman village (DOW005:064).

Adam McClean, after whom the house was built, was a significant figure in early 19th-century Belfast. Born the son of an innkeeper, he moved to Belfast with his brothers Samuel and Andrew, who operated a wine and spirit business in Sugarhouse Entry around the turn of the 19th century. Adam was initially in the woollen trade but by 1831 had been appointed to the committee of the White Linen Hall, suggesting a move into the linen trade. He acquired much of the land to the rear of the White Linen Hall between Linenhall Street and what is now Great Victoria Street — an area that became known as McLean's Fields. This was a damp floodplain of the River Blackstaff that saw little development until the land was drained in the 1850s, after which it could be leased at considerable profit. McClean also built a block of houses on Donegall Square South between Linenhall Street and Adelaide Street, now demolished. Notably, he was for some years the owner of the Shrine of St Patrick's Bell, a remarkable object made around 1100 under the patronage of Domhnall Ua Lochlainn, King of Ireland, to house the bell of St Patrick, which was then kept at Armagh. After McClean's death around 1849, at the age of approximately 82, the shrine was acquired from his estate by Trinity College and now forms part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Ireland.

The house is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, captioned "Rockfield", with broadly the same rectangular plan form as today, including a porch to the front and attached outbuildings to either side. Further outbuildings were then arranged around the edges of an open courtyard in front of the main house, set within a demesne laid out with trees and pathways. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs for the parish of Dundonald describe Rockfield as a gentleman's seat surrounded by a young plantation. The site was chosen adjacent to a field known as Chapel Field, which contained the remains of an ancient church; these remains, not shown on the first or second edition maps, are noted as "Church (site of)" on the third edition.

By 1852 the house had been let to James Shaw, with a gate lodge added to the plot. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 to 1864 records a valuation of £36, with Shaw paying a rent of approximately £100 yearly for the house and over 46 acres of land. In 1873 the house passed to Adam S. Forster, and the valuation rose to £45 the following year, suggesting improvements to the house or outbuildings.

By 1876 the house had been taken on by the Symington family from Exeter. Samuel Symington was a yarn salesman who died in 1898, leaving his estate unusually to his three daughters. By the time of the 1901 census, Maria Symington was resident along with her brothers Samuel, a 50-year-old retired linen merchant, and Robert, also a linen merchant, and her sister Josephine. Two boarders connected to the linen trade also resided there, including a 70-year-old retired linen merchant from Armagh and his son. The house had 17 rooms and was classified as first class. The family firm was Messrs Symington and Kirkwood & Co of 47 Queen Street, Belfast. Robert Symington was a notable figure in Dundonald Presbyterian Church, serving as Clerk of Session and Sabbath School Superintendent from 1879 to 1895, and in 1898 he formed both a church choir and a Boys' Brigade company. The flute band of that company became known as the Brigade Band and competed successfully. When Robert Symington died in 1923, the band was renamed the Symington Memorial Flute Band in his honour. The North of Ireland Flute Band Association, which Symington had founded, began to present an annual Symington Cup. In 1951 the band converted to brass instruments and continues to perform today under the name of the Symington Memorial Silver Band.

By 1909, as recorded in the 1911 census, the occupant was William L. Greaves, a linen merchant, who lived with his wife and a small staff of a cook and a parlourmaid. The Greaves family remained in the house for some decades, until the late 1960s, when it passed to Isaac Agnew. In recent years the house was converted for use as a nursing home and now lies vacant.

Rockfield is a relatively rare example of a large 18th-century country house in this part of County Down. Despite the alterations associated with its nursing home use and the compromised setting to the rear caused by the conversion of outbuildings and the addition of modern apartments, the house retains its essential Georgian proportions, its symmetrically arranged principal elevation, and sufficient architectural detail and historic interest to merit its listed status.