Boat House at Myra Castle Demesne, 58 Myra Road, Raholp, Downpatrick, Co. Down, BT30 7JX

Boat House at Myra Castle Demesne

A simple stone boat house situated on the southern shore of Strangford Lough within the Myra Castle demesne, constructed around the 1840s to 1850s. The building is a single-cell structure of random rubble greywacke construction, largely intact and retaining considerable historic character.

The boat house features a half-hipped natural slate roof with roll-moulded ridge tiles and flat hip tiles. Rainwater goods are missing, though cast-iron gutter brackets remain. The walls throughout are of random greywacke rubble. Openings consist of a timber boarded door to the south and a large pair of replacement timber sheeted doors on the north side facing the shore. Historic graffiti is inscribed on slates near the eaves.

The building is accessed from the public road past Myra Castle, the farmyard and walled garden, via a tree-lined lane. It forms part of a remarkably intact cultural landscape that includes a traditional County Down sea wall of vertically laid rubble greywacke without mortar. Access to the shore is provided by a timber gate supported on square rubble stone piers with shallow pyramidal dressed stone caps and a roughly dressed stone stile, which also bears historic graffiti. The remains of a contemporary pier are located immediately to the north-east.

The boat house sits in a highly picturesque setting overlooking Strangford Lough and the drumlins, directly opposite Killyleagh. It was constructed between 1834 and 1859, most likely during the 1840s and 1850s when Rowland Craig-Laurie was developing Myra Castle and its parklands. The building does not appear on the first edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1834 but was recorded on the second edition of 1859, depicted as a small square building with an associated long pier extending into the lough. The primary function of the boat house and pier was to provide a landing point for supply boats laden with coal to offload cargo near the castle, though this venture reportedly failed and was attempted only once, owing to the distance between the house and the pier. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1861, Rowland Craig-Laurie remained the owner and occupant of the entire estate. Later Ordnance Survey maps from 1900 to 1921 show that no major discernible changes have been made to the building since its mid-19th century construction. The boat house contributes significantly to the group value of the demesne, which includes the Romantic 19th-century Myra Castle and the much earlier 16th-century Walshestown Castle, a tower house that stands on the site of an Anglo-Norman fortification built by John de Courcy.