Bee Boles at Moat House

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A series of six bee boles located in the rear garden of a house, now forming a garden feature; they face southwards.

They consist of small rectangular recesses set in a low basalt rubble wall with roughly rendered reveals.

SETTING: The bee boles stand in the rear garden of a house located in a very rural area next to a church. The house itself is reputed to be of 18th century foundation but has now been modernised: of two storeys, with roughcast walls, concrete tiled roof, rectangular timber small paned fixed lights and top-hung vents, with a modern PVC lean-to conservatory to the rear adjacent to the bee boles.

Historical information

Built as receptacles for bees for the cultivation of honey. Precise date of construction not recorded: nothing is indicated in their position on the OS map of 1832 but on the 1857 OS map a new garden layout is indicated with elements indicated in that position, although not named as such. They may therefore be presumed to date any time from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s.
This structure lies within the area of an historic monument, no. ANT50:47.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 50.

Secondary Sources
1. E. Sandford, Discover Northern Ireland (NITB, Belfast, 1976), p 42.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

D. Plan Form
E. Spatial Organisation

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

This is a masonry construction consisting of a wall containing a series of six bee boles in the form of small rectangular recesses, probably of 19th century date. Although no longer used for their original purpose they are of some interest as a comparatively rare survival of their type.