160 Ballylesson Road, Ballylesson, Belfast, County Down, BT8 8JU

No. 160 Ballylesson Road is a detached two-storey rendered house built circa 1860, with a gable-ended rear return. The house is rectangular on plan, facing northwest, and sits on an elevated site on the south side of Ballylesson Road.

The pitched roof is covered with natural slate and topped with black clay ridge tiles. Three yellow-brick chimneystack with octagonal clay pots pierce the roofline. The walling is rough-cast rendered. The front elevation, four windows wide, features square-headed window openings with painted masonry sills and replacement 6/6 timber sash windows with exposed sash boxes. A central segmental-headed door opening contains a replacement timber panelled door and replacement timber surround, possibly retaining an original webbed timber fanlight. The door opens onto a stone step serving the elevated front garden. The east gable has single window openings to each floor. The rear elevation is abutted by an off-centre gable-ended two-storey return surmounted by a yellow-brick chimneystacks, featuring replacement 2/2 timber sash windows. The rear elevation openings have replacement 6/6 timber sash windows and two door openings with replacement glazed timber doors; the principal rear entrance has a modern decorative timber door surround. The west gable has a pair of window openings to the first floor with 6/6 timber sash windows and a segmental-headed window opening to the ground floor with a replacement tripartite timber sash window. Plastic rainwater goods are fitted to the timber fascia.

An earlier building occupied the site, first appearing on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map as an oblong building with a rear return. The current house was recorded as 'unfinished' in Griffith's Valuation of 1861, when it was valued at £2 10s and leased by Robert Batt of Purdysburn House to William Moore. Moore also let two smaller houses, valued at 10s each to the east of the property, to lodgers. By the second edition Ordnance Survey map (1858) the house possessed its two-storey rear return; a single-storey outbuilding to the rear had been constructed by that date. William Moore occupied the house until his death prior to 1901, when his son Samuel Walter Moore inherited the property and renamed it 'Forthill Dairy'. The third edition Ordnance Survey map (1901–02) shows additional outbuildings had been constructed to the southwest and southeast. The 1901 Census records Samuel Moore (56), a dairy farmer, occupying Forthill with his wife Mary (45) and infant daughter Bertha, with several domestic and farm servants employed. The Census Building Return described Forthill as a first-class dwelling of ten rooms. By the 1911 Census, the property included extensive farm buildings: four cow houses, a dairy house, three stables, a piggery, a boiling house and a barn. Samuel Moore continued to occupy Forthill until his death in 1922, leaving the house and effects valued at £212 5s 10d to his married daughter Bertha Carmichael. The property remained recorded as Forthill Dairy until the sixth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1938. The house is now primarily used as a private dwelling. It was purchased by the current owner's family in the 1970s. The rear outbuilding, formerly a barn, was converted into a garage during the 1980s. The original dairy outbuildings had been demolished by the 1973 Ordnance Survey map, though a corrugated iron shed to the southwest may represent one of the outbuildings shown on the 1901–02 map.

The house is set on an elevated site along the southeast side of Ballylesson Road. To the rear stands a converted rubblestone former outbuilding with a replacement low-pitched slate roof. A short gravel drive opens onto Ballylesson Road to the south via a pair of modern steel gates.

Despite retaining some of its mid-nineteenth-century external composition, much of the original fabric and detailing is replacement. Although of interest due to its prominent roadside location and contribution to the character of Ballylesson Road, the house is not considered of special interest and does not meet the criteria for listing.