Lake House, 7 Drumcullan Road, Downpatrick, County Down, BT30 8JE

Lake House is a one-and-a-half storey cottage-style dwelling built around 1830 and significantly remodelled around 1890. It occupies a picturesque position overlooking Ballydugan Lake on Drumcullan Road, south of Downpatrick. The house retains a high proportion of its original fabric and presents considerable authenticity. It has group value with the nearby listed Ballydugan Mill and Ballydugan House.

ARCHITECTURE AND APPEARANCE

The building has a long rectangular front block with a perpendicular two-storey return projecting to the rear, set at a lower level but sharing the same ridge height. The roof is pitched natural slate with angled ridge tiles, and there are rendered chimneystacks to both the main block and the rear block. Half-round cast iron rainwater goods run along the eaves corbel, interrupted by two wall-head dormers with slate-hung sides. The walling is ruled and lined cement render throughout, with quoins to the front block.

Windows throughout are timber sliding sashes, generally 6-over-6 pane, with painted masonry cills and plain reveals.

The principal elevation faces west and is eight openings wide. It has a replacement timber entrance door slightly left of centre with a replacement overlight above, and two 1-over-1 dormers. The north gable has two attic windows, each with 2-over-2 panes divided horizontally. The rear elevation, abutted by the two-storey rear block, faces north and has a window to each floor on either side of a central replacement timber door; the upper floor windows have thin slate cills. The gable at this end is built into a bank and its openings are blocked with concrete block. The south elevation has two attic windows, each with 2-over-2 panes divided vertically.

SETTING

The house has a small garden to the front, bounded to the road by a rendered boundary wall with a timber gate at either end. A sloped garden rises via stone steps to wooded ground to the north. On the opposite side of the road there is a larger, well-maintained garden bounded to the west by Ballydugan Lake, with fine views over the lake and the Mourne Mountains.

HISTORY

The small townland of Ballydugan is dominated by the eight-storey Ballydugan Flour Mill, built in 1792, which used the nearby lake as a water source. Lewis' Topographical Dictionary of Ireland records that close to the lake stood Ballydugan House, a gentleman's mansion constructed in 1770 on the site of an earlier 17th century structure, which had originally been the residence of Colonel White, who was murdered and whose mansion was burnt during the war of 1641.

The precise date of construction of Lake House — located immediately north of Ballydugan Mill and west of Ballydugan House — is not known with certainty, but it was already in existence before the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map of 1834, which depicts the cottage in its current layout, including the projecting rear return, on the eastern side of the lake. The Townland Valuations of around 1830 record the house valued jointly with the flour mill at a combined rateable value of £62. At that time, Isaac Hardy rented both the cottage and the mill from William Wallace, Robert Denvir and Sarah Rentoul at an annual rent of £350, though the records do not confirm whether Hardy actually lived in the cottage.

By the mid-19th century both the cottage and the mill had fallen vacant. Griffith's Valuation of 1861 recorded the unoccupied flour mill at £45 and the similarly empty cottage at £8. By 1871 the cottage had risen in value to £13, and Ulster Town Directories of the 1870s record that Army Major Charles C. Johnston resided there, the property being known at that time as Lake Cottage. Johnston remained until 1889, when the Reverend Lewis A. Pooler took possession. The cottage's rateable value was raised to £14 10s. in 1890, coinciding with a significant remodelling that introduced Victorian features including the dormer windows. Reverend Pooler (born 1859) was a Church of Ireland cleric who served as rector and later Archdeacon of Downpatrick Cathedral, and was also Deputy Master of the County Down Grand Orange Lodge. He remained at Lake Cottage until around the turn of the 20th century.

By 1901 the property had been occupied by George T. Harley, a solicitor practising in Downpatrick, and the house had by this point been renamed Ballydugan Cottage. The 1901 census records George T. Harley (aged 41, Church of Ireland, born in Cork City) living there with his wife Clara (aged 37), their daughter May (aged 4), a nurse and two domestic servants. The census building return classified Ballydugan Cottage as a first-class dwelling containing 14 rooms. Harley remained until 1909, when the property passed briefly to C. M. Russell, also a solicitor, who lived there with his wife Ann J. Russell until 1912.

In that same year Ballydugan House was purchased outright from Colonel R. Wallace by a Mr. James Kelly. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935, the value of Ballydugan Cottage was raised to £21, and James Kelly was still in residence during the 1930s, though he had vacated by the 1950s. The Second General Revaluation (1956–72) records that his relative Kathleen Kelly had taken over ownership from at least 1956, and that the value was further increased to £31 10s. by the end of that revaluation period.

The house was visited as part of the First Survey in 1976 but was not listed at that time. The First Survey Record described it as a long single-storey house with an attic, slated roof, rendered gable ends and chimneystacks, a rendered front wall with two gabled and slated dormers, a panelled door with plain fanlight, and a rear projection.