Cumran House, 231 Newcastle Road, Cumran, near Clough, Downpatrick, Co Down, BT30 8SQ

Cumran House is a substantial two-storey residence built in 1840, located at the end of a long winding drive west of Newcastle Road, less than a mile north-west of Clough village and 5.5 miles south-west of Downpatrick in County Down. The house is of special architectural and historic interest, characterised by its Regency style overhanging hipped roof with a large overhang and curved plaster soffit.

The south front is symmetrical with a centred front panelled door flanked by four-pane sidelights and a spiders-web segmental fanlight. To either side of the door are single sash windows with Georgian panes (6/6), with three further evenly spaced sash windows above, slightly shorter (3/6). The original building is roofed with natural blue-grey slate, and two plastered chimney stacks rise to the ridge. Cast iron rainwater goods with swan-neck pipes are fitted throughout.

The west elevation has two window openings to the ground floor, the right having been bricked up and the left matching the front ground floor window. The first floor mirrors this arrangement. To the far left is a recently constructed gabled projection, which formerly served as a small dairy, with two four-pane fixed windows to its ground floor and a similar narrower window set at a higher level. The east elevation of the original house follows a similar pattern to the west, with only the top right window blocked.

Large but sympathetic single-storey extensions were added to the rear largely in 1988. A long single-storey hipped roof extension to the east has a 14-pane French door with geometric fanlight and three evenly spaced 15-pane fixed windows to its west face. A wide single-storey flat-roofed extension occupies the centre rear, with a six-panel door with moulded surround flanked by 9-pane fixed frame windows. The west extension features two roundels each with 12 Georgian-like panes to its east face, a radiused north-west corner, and a high-level 6/6 sash window within its gabled north face with an asymmetric gable. These extensions create a courtyard effect to the rear elevation.

Cumran House was built in 1840 by Reverend John Andrew McMordie, the then Minister of Seaforde Presbyterian Church, who had acquired the land the previous year. The building costs totalled roughly £500. McMordie remained at Cumran until around 1873, when he sold it to the Kirkwood family. The Kirkwoods abandoned the house around 1958, after which it lay largely derelict for 15 years until purchased by the present owner's husband, who commissioned the 1988 rear extensions.