Kilbroney House, Kilbroney Road, Rostrevor, Co.Down

Kilbroney House is a mid-19th century country house on Kilbroney Road, Rostrevor, County Down, most likely built shortly after 1840 and certainly in existence before 1860. It remains in residential use and is privately owned.

A building of similar orientation but smaller and slightly different plan is recorded on this site on the Ordnance Survey map of 1834. The valuation of the following year describes it as an old house in good condition, measuring 55 feet by 21 feet by 11 feet, with returns of 43 by 16 by 7 feet, 43 by 5 by 7 feet, and 30 by 10 by 5 feet, and offices measuring 17 by 10 by 9 feet, 24 by 19 by 14 feet, and 34 by 22 by 12 feet. This earlier dwelling was most likely of mid-18th century construction and is thought to have been built by the founder of a bleach mill that formerly stood a short distance to the south. A 1977 sale notice for the present house states that the title deeds date back to approximately 1745, and the Belfast News-Letter contains references to a bleachyard in Kilbroney townland in 1756, with a mill shown in the vicinity on a map of 1767. In 1756 the bleaching concern was in the hands of Hugh and James Moore, but by at least 1815 both it and the house — known as Kilbroney — were in the possession of Robert Martin. Robert died in 1831 and the whole property passed to his sister, Jane Martin (1765–1840), and from her to her nephew, another Robert Martin (1814–58).

The present house was built some time before 1860, most likely shortly after 1840 when the younger Robert Martin came into the property. Paul Larmour has credited its design to the architect Thomas Duff of Newry, though no concrete evidence linking Duff to the building has yet come to light. The second valuation of 1860 records the new house as measuring 27 yards by 9 feet by 2 storeys (19 feet in height), with two returns of approximately 4 by 13 feet by 2 storeys (18 feet) and 2 by 6 feet by 2 storeys (18 feet). It is not certain whether any fabric from the previous dwelling was incorporated into the new building.

The house has a notable and at times dramatic social history. Robert Martin and his wife Millicent both died of scarlet fever within days of each other in 1858, leaving seven orphaned children. Robert's brother, John Martin (1812–75), moved to Kilbroney to care for them. John Martin — known as 'Honest' John — had come to prominence in the late 1840s as a leading figure in the radical nationalist Young Ireland movement, which led to his arrest and transportation to Australia in 1848. He was fully pardoned in 1856, returned to Ireland in 1858, and remained permanently following his brother's death. He became politically active again in the 1860s, championing legislative independence and tenant right, and was elected Member of Parliament for County Meath in 1870, holding the seat until his death in 1875.

Around 1870 Kilbroney House passed to John Martin's nephew, Robert Martin (1849–1940), who went on to manage the bleach mill with David Martin, probably his uncle David Martin (1824–1905). In the 1880s there appears to have been a legal dispute over the title to the property, the details of which are unclear, but which may have involved claims from descendants of the Moore family who had held the property in the mid-18th century, and which may or may not have been complicated by mental illness on the part of both Robert Martin and his younger brother John; John was declared a lunatic in 1889 and Robert in 1893. It was possibly as a result of these circumstances that the house was advertised to let in September 1884, the advertisement describing it as possessing a drawing room, dining room, library, six bedrooms, servants' rooms, kitchen, pantries, store rooms, two water closets, cellars, good stabling, four loose boxes, a coach house, harness room, and a gate house, together with five acres and additional land of up to fifty acres if required. Throughout this period David Martin appears to have continued to operate the mill, and his name appears against the whole property in the Belfast and Province of Ulster Directories throughout; there is no indication in the valuations that the house itself was ever leased outside the Martin family. The 1901 census records John Martin, his wife Mary, and their son John as living there.

In 1905 the property appears to have been sold to John Porter Porter of Belle Isle, County Fermanagh, who leased it to Percy A. Baker. In 1911 it was leased to Robert Maximilian Rainey Robinson, a Colonel on the Indian Army Active List, who in that year's census was occupying the house with his wife Alice Frances, their three young daughters, a governess, and two domestic servants. The house was noted in the census as a first-class dwelling with 18 rooms in use. Colonel Rainey Robinson was appointed to an important command overseas in late 1915, and by late 1918 Eric C. Lindsay had become tenant.

In 1920 both the house and the mill — which had not been worked for several years at that point — were sold to Sir Francis William Stronge (1856–1924), brother of Sir James H. Stronge of Tynan Abbey, County Armagh. In a strange parallel with the earlier fate of Robert Martin and his wife, Sir Francis and Lady Mary Stronge died within a few weeks of each other in 1924. The house was consequently put up for sale again in 1925, advertised as a delightful gabled country residence containing a central hall, three reception rooms, six bedrooms, two bathrooms, and excellent servants' apartments, lit throughout by electricity generated by a turbine. The sale particulars described a spacious gravelled terrace along the front and one end of the house, an avenue approach with gate lodge from the county road at Rostrevor, a second entrance from the Newtown Road, rock, rose, fruit, and vegetable gardens, well-timbered and well-fenced pleasure grounds and arable lands laid out in convenient divisions, a gravitation water supply, an up-to-date sewerage system, a farmyard with stabling, garage, byre, fowl and dairy accommodation, and two workmen's cottages.

The house appears to have been eventually sold or leased, sometime after 1927, to Mrs Alice Mary Lindsay, whose husband Eric had lived there approximately a decade earlier. Mrs Lindsay died in 1931. John William Jennings was householder from at least late 1933 to early 1936, and a Miss Fenton occupied the house in 1941–42. In August 1942 the building was sold for £4,750 to Mrs F. Kennedy, who appears to have leased it back to the Fenton family. Subsequent recorded residents include Alexander McCann in 1953, Major Gerald W. Reside in 1961, Mrs Kennedy herself the following year, and W. McDonald in 1982.