Ballealy Cottage

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 1½ storey stone-built house with tall octagonal chimneys, and single storey returns which enclose a small open yard at the rear. Main entrance faces east.

Entrance front comprises a main block to the left, consisting of a half-hipped gable containing one window to each floor, with an entrance bay set back to the right, and a lower wing set back to the right of that, containing one window.
Walls are of squared random rubble with lime mortar pointing; projecting sandstone plinth. Roofs of Bangor blue slates in regular courses with cusped tracery to decorative timber barge boards, terminating in large timber scrolls; clay ridge tiles. Cast iron gutters with cast iron downpipes. Windows are rectangular timber side-hung casements, with top lights to ground floor windows, set in chamfered reveals, with flat arches to the heads and projecting stone cills. Three-light ground floor window to main block is surmounted by a small slate roofed canopy with timber panelled soffit, carried on a pair of shaped stone corbels. Main entrance doorway contains a rectangular timber 10-panel door in a moulded timber frame recessed in chamfered surrounds similar to window, and surmounted by a small slate canopy as previous to large ground floor window; stone doorstep, flanked each side by projecting stone blocks each mounted with an iron bootscraper. In the wall above the entrance is a projecting carved circular stone resembling the point of a cannon. Single storey wing to right-hand side contains a two-light casement window.

South elevation comprises the 1½ storey main block to the right with a lower single storey rear return extending to the left and set back slightly. Main block contains a half-hipped central breakfront which has a three-light window to the ground floor and a two-light window in a dormer above; dormer has decorative timber barge boards as previous; ground floor window is surmounted by a small slate roofed canopy as previous. Cast iron gutters and downpipes. Walling as previous to main block.
Single storey rear return to left: roof slated as previous; rainwater goods as previous; walling as previous except no plinth. Three windows, two-light casements without top-lights, in similar surrounds to previous; projecting sandstone cills.

Rear elevation: rear gable of main block is blank, of similar walling as previous, with half-hipped roof and decorative barge boards; gable surmounted by a chimney stack of squared basalt in regular courses, carrying a pair of tall octagonal pots in moulded stonework. Projecting from the gable is the single storey return which itself returns across the rear elevation and back along the north elevation to enclose a small open rear yard. Rear face of rear return has a hipped roof, slated as previous; contains a small smooth rendered chimney without pots. Wall contains two doorways, rectangular timber sheeted, in moulded timber frames; the one to the right set in a flat arch with plain reveals; with projecting stone base blocks; the one to the left similar but with a rough timber lintel to the head. Cast iron gutter.
Rear wall of gabled wing to north of main block has a tall stone chimney of similar stonework to that of the main block itself, surmounted by a pair of octagonal pots but shorter than previous.

North elevation comprises the gabled north wing to the left, projecting from the gable of the main block, with a lower single storey rear return to the right. Main block gable is blank, with decorative barge boards to half-hip. North wing gable is of similar walling to entrance elevation, including plinth; contains a large 3-light window to ground floor and a 2-light window to the first floor; plain gabled roof with decorative timber barge boards as previous. Rear return to right is of similar walling to wing except no plinth; roof slated as previous; cast iron rainwater goods as previous; wall contains three windows similar to south elevation of return.

SETTING: The building stands in a very rural area, at the end of a very long and narrow lane off the main road, standing in its own grassed area bordered by trees on the edge of a large country house estate, the ground having originally been part of the estate, but now cut off from it by a forest park. Standing to the rear of the house is a rectangular open yard containing a single storey outbuilding along the west side. Yard approached through a gateway containing a pair of square basalt rubble piers with rhyolite caps, but no gates; flanked each side by low boundary walls of basalt rubble which return along the north and south sides to abut the outbuilding. Outbuilding is of squared random rubble with slated gabled roof; contains a large rectangular garage opening without door, three rectangular timber sheeted half-doors, and three small rectangular four-pane replacement fixed lights or casements; projecting sandstone cills.
Standing to the north of the house is a derelict venison store or venison house.

VENISON HOUSE: A rectangular single storey stone building of basalt rubble, with some sandstone quoins; now roofless. Entrance front faces south and contains a rectangular doorway now blocked up; rough timber lintels. West wall contains a rectangular window opening now blocked with concrete blockwork; concrete lintel. South elevation similar to west. East elevation blank. Walls covered with creeper. It was described in the first survey in 1971 as having a "pyramidal slated roof at rear".

Historical information

Built by Lord O'Neill of Shane's Castle as a house for the park-keeper of the deerpark on the estate; precise date of building not known but it appears to date from the 1830s. It is shown for the first time on the OS map of 1858, named 'Deerpark Cottage', a different building having been shown in the vicinity on the OS map of 1829 & 32 and not named; 'Deerpark Cottage' re-named 'Ballealy Cottage' on the OS maps of 1902 and 1921; it appears to be the building described in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs in 1838, in reference to lodges in the deerpark, as "the residence of the park-keeper and is built of stone, in miniature imitation of the lodge of the ranger of Windsor forest. Attached to it is an aviary on a small scale in which are some gold and silver pheasants." A tentative attribution by one source in the 1990s to the Dublin architect Richard Morrison does not appear to have any sound basis. The portion of the Shane's Castle estate in which the building stands has now been cut off from the main area of the estate by an area now known as Randalstown Forest.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1829 & 32, Co Antrim 49 (a different building is shown on the site and is not named).
2. OS Map 1858, Co Antrim 49 (named 'Deerpark Cottage').
3. OS Map 1902, Co Antrim 49 (named 'Ballealy Cottage').
4. OS Map 1921, Co Antrim 49 (named 'Ballealy cottage').
5. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 19: Parishes of County Antrim VI, 1830, 1833, 1835-8 (Belfast, 1993), p 50.

Secondary Sources
1. J.A.K. Dean, The Gate Lodges of Ulster (Belfast, 1994), p 27 (but the photograph is back to front).
2. Ireland's Homes, Interiors and Living, No 62, August 2000, pp 87-92.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

This is a fine early 19th century house in a picturesque 'cottage style', with unusually prominent chimneys and elaborate and ornate timber barge boards, which enjoys an unspoiled rural setting in part of a wooded demesne. It has group value with the other listed buildings on the estate.

General comments

This record was originally numbered as HB20/04/048.