Entrance and field gates at Quintin Castle,

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Unusual medieval style entrance gateway of c.1855, leading to the grounds of Quintin Castle. The gateway is set in a boundary wall (to the W of the castle itself) fronting onto Kearney Road, c.3 miles SE of Portaferry. Directly across the road from these gates are smaller gates, in a similar style.

Entrance gateway consists of ‘triangular’ arch carriage way set between two crenellated octagonal towers. Tower to south side is larger (c.2.5m x c.7m ) than that to north and has lancet arch pedestrian doorway in front elevation (facing west to road) with timber sheeted door, with similar doorway to rear of tower. Two small window slits roughly half way up front elevation of larger tower with two to rear. The smaller tower (c.1.75 x c.5m) is blank. Timber gates in grid (portcullis inspired) design in same ‘triangular’ shape as gateway. Towers set between boundary wall (c.3.5m in height).

The gateway on opposite side of road is much smaller with timber ‘picket fence’ like gates between two small (c.1m x c.2.5m) octagonal crenellated towers, both set in low (c.0.75m) flat rubble field wall.

Historical information

These gates were constructed c.1855 at the same time as the remodelling and extending of Quintin Castle by Mrs Elizabeth Calvert and her husband, Rev. Nicholson Calvert.

QUINTIN CASTLE
This large extravagant Victorian vision of a medieval Irish castle is actually built upon and around the ruins of an originally 12th century castle, constructed by the Anglo-Norman adventurer, John de Courcy. In the later middle ages the castle was held by the Smiths, a dependent family of the Savages. In the mid 1600s Sir James Montgomery, a relation of the Savages, purchased the castle and the surrounding lands from Dualtagh Smith. Sir James and his son,William, renovated the castle adding a large house to it as well as a walled courtyard.

Some time after an interlude in the 1650s, when a Cromwellian officer held Quintin, the Montgomerys sold the castle to George Ross, a member of an influential local family who held lands at Kearney. Ross never lived at the castle, which remained in its mid seventeenth century form until the 1850s, when one of his descendants, a Mrs. Elizabeth Calvert, set about remodelling what was by that time, a roofless and dilapidated structure much of whose stone, according to the OS Memoirs, had been taken by locals. This remodelling included the raising in height of the central keep, the construction of drawing and dining rooms and general decoration to the entire building, as well as rebuilding the courtyard walls, gates and outer towers.

In 1897, the estate was sold by the Land Commission, however, the house remained with the descendants of the Calverts, one of whom, Miss Louise King-Hall, became a writer whose many works included ‘The Wicked Lady’, a story of highwaymen and women, which later became a successful film. The King-Halls sold the castle in the 1920s and Quintin passed though a series of owners, one of whom, Mr. James O’Hara, ran the building as a nursing home during the 1980s. It may have been at this stage that that the secondary entrance in the front facade was added, perhaps to provide easier access for some of the elderly residents.

The building has now reverted to its earlier function of a somewhat ornate country residence.

References- Primary sources
1 Walter Harris, 'The Ancient and Present State of the County of Down' (Dublin 1744), p. 47
2 PRONI OS/6/3/32/1 Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st ed., 1834, Down sheet 32
3 Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams
(QUB 1991), p. 126
4 PRONI OS/6/3/32/2 Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st rev., 1860, Down sheet 32
5 PRONI Second valuation, Ballytrustan, 1861 (in print)
6 PRONI OS/6/3/32/3 Ordnance Survey maps, 2nd ed., 1899-1900, Down sheet 32

Secondary sources
1 'Archaeological Survey of Co Down' (Belfast HMSO 1966), p.246
2 Thomas Byers, "Quintin Castle", in 'Journal of the Upper Ards Historical Society No.6' (1982), pp.7-9
3 Jim Blaney, "Mary Ann Donnan of Kearney" in 'Journal of the Upper Ards Historical Society No.3' (1979), pp.24-5

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Unusual medieval style entrance gateway of c.1855, leading to the grounds of the listed Quintin Castle, with smaller field gates, in similar style, close by.