Meat safe, Myra Castle, Raholp, Downpatrick, Co Down, BT30 7JX

Meat Safe at Myra Castle

This is a freestanding domestic meat safe of late 19th century date, designed in a fairly plain style. It is of special interest both as an integral part of a country house estate and as a comparatively rare example of its type. The building stands on steeply sloping ground immediately to the rear of Myra Castle, reached down three steps from a path along the base of the retaining wall of the garden to the south side of the castle. It enjoys a pleasant garden setting and forms part of an interesting group together with the main house and other associated structures in the grounds nearby, such as the covered horse-walk and the Mogul pavilion garden house.

The meat safe is a small single storey pavilion-like rendered building on a stone base, of square plan with a hipped roof. The entrance faces west. The west elevation is symmetrical with three bays. The hipped roof is of black-painted corrugated metal bolted onto timber boarding, supported on shaped green-painted rafters and similarly painted plain timber framing. There is a shaped wooden finial to the apex with painted metal covering. The wall is rendered, lined and blocked, surmounted by a chamfered granite cill which carries a timber framework containing window openings with black-painted iron trellis-work grilles affixed. The central doorway contains a rectangular ledged timber door with an open upper panel with a trellis-like grille affixed, modern brass door knob and lock case, and a stone flagged doorstep. The side and rear elevations are of similar character to the front, with two window openings containing grilles as described above. The walling is as the front but with a partly battered rubble stone base laid in lime mortar.

The building was erected in association with Myra Castle and appears for the first time on the Ordnance Survey map of 1920, not having been shown on the 1859 map. It does not appear on a photograph of Myra Castle published in 1871. It may be supposed to have been built circa 1880. The meat safe remained in regular use until 1970 and was restored in 2003. Myra Castle itself was built from 1844 onwards with numerous alterations and additions by Rowland Craig-Laurie, who had married the daughter of Richard Anderson, owner of the nearby medieval Walshestown Castle. The Craig-Lauries were followed by the Wallaces from 1900 onwards, but by then all the significant elements of the house and associated estate buildings had been erected.