60 Myra Road, Raholp, Downpatrick, County Down, BT30 7JX

Gardener's House, Walled Garden, Store, Kissing Gate and Piers, Myra Castle Demesne, built circa 1860

This is a single-storey with attic, two-bay stone-built gardener's house, constructed around 1860 as part of the Myra Castle demesne in the townland of Walshestown on the shores of Strangford Lough. It punctuates the western wall of an irregular walled garden occupying the northern portion of the demesne, and is accessed by a tree-lined lane from the main house and farmyard to the south. The building retains a high proportion of its original fabric and presents an essentially unaltered appearance since its construction in the mid-to-late 19th century.

The house has a rectangular footprint facing west, and is built from random rubble greywacke with roughly dressed corner stones and some brick to the flues. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with angled ridge tiles, and the gable chimneystacks are of brick and have been rebuilt. Cast iron gutters run to exposed rafter tails. The windows are side-hung timber casements, each with four panes, retaining a high proportion of original float glass. They have dressed stone cills, undressed stone lintels, and wrought iron grilles to the front windows.

The west elevation is symmetrical, with a central timber door flanked by a window to either side. The door is particularly notable, comprising four Gothic-arched panels over a tongue-and-groove lower portion, with a cast iron hoop knocker and brass knob, set within a chamfered timber frame on a stone threshold. The north gable is abutted by the garden wall and is lit by two attic windows, reduced in size. The east, rear, elevation has a window to either side of a diminished central window at high level, and is screened from the garden by a rubble stone boundary wall terminated by a slender cylindrical pier, enclosing a narrow passage. The south gable is also abutted by the garden wall, with a lower outbuilding to its inner portion, and is lit by a single attic window to the left side.

Associated with the house to the west is a well, and to the north is a metal gate on rubble stone gate piers leading to the lough shore and boathouse. This gate is accompanied by a wrought iron kissing gate within a rubble stone enclosure terminated by neat dressed stone piers.

The walled garden is irregular on plan and bounded by a greywacke rubble wall, with a curved section to the west and a curved south-west corner. Approximately 80% of the wall survives intact, with collapsed sections to the north and east. Access is provided through a variety of openings, including Gothic-arched openings to the north and east. The main entrances to the west, adjacent to the gardener's house, consist of a cart entrance with a heavy stone lintel and timber sheeted doors, and a small square-headed opening that leads into a small rubble stone enclosure with a vaulted brick-lined roof. A narrow river runs through the walled garden to the east.

The garden is now largely overgrown and its internal structures are derelict, but remnants survive of melon houses with brick bases, peach houses, and a boiler house, generally consisting of brick bases with remains of a heating system and some timber framing to glasshouses, including at least one margin-paned half-glazed panelled door. The western wall is further punctuated by a stone-built store with a double-pitch ventilated slate roof, whose garden-facing elevation has a central door and small windows to either side, all with pointed arched heads.

The walled garden also encloses two scheduled monuments: Walshestown Castle, an intact 16th century tower house, and an associated medieval ecclesiastical site. The tower house served as the centrepiece of the private walled garden laid out by Rowland Craig-Laurie between the 1840s and 1850s, and Craig-Laurie had previously constructed his castellated mansion house, Myra Castle, to its south in 1844. Architects Bell, Brett and Matthew described Myra Castle as "a remarkable early-Victorian mansion, built over a period — with many changes of plan — about the 1850s." Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, written in the 1830s, records that Walshestown Castle was believed to occupy the site of an earlier fortification built by John de Courcy during the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland, and that it had been occupied by Captain Richard Anderson's ancestors since the reign of Charles I in the 17th century. Anderson was Craig-Laurie's father-in-law, and prior to his death around 1840 he resided in the tower house, making it the only one of 27 comparable examples to remain inhabited during the 19th century. The contemporary townland Valuations of around 1830 described it simply as a "house," recorded Anderson as its occupant, and valued it at £25 12s.

The gardener's house does not appear on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1859, which does however show the walled garden already laid out. It first appears on the third edition map of 1900–01 as a small rectangular building close to the western garden wall, and the fourth edition map of 1920–21 confirms that its rectangular layout has remained unchanged since construction. Griffith's Valuation of 1861 combined the value of Myra Castle and all its offices and outbuildings at £130 without individually identifying the gardener's house, and subsequent valuations continued this practice, making it impossible to trace the building's individual value or occupancy history through the documentary record. The building continues in use today as a private dwelling.

The entire group — the gardener's house, walled garden, store, kissing gate and piers — occupies an unspoiled and particularly high-quality setting on the shores of Strangford Lough, and forms part of a remarkably intact cultural landscape. Several other listed buildings are associated with the demesne, including Myra Castle itself and its boathouse.