Nunsquarter House

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Nunsquarter House is a substantial gentleman’s residence of c.1840-50 built partly on the site of an earlier complex. It is situated slightly back from the Shore Road, half a mile N of the village of Kircubbin.

The main section of the house is a two storey hipped roof formal building with three main extensions: one to the N, a single storey hipped roof dining room; a long narrow gabled greenhouse to the S; and a large two storey return to the rear (W), which may in fact contain the fabric of the oldest part of the entire house.

The main house faces E and has a central recessed front door screen. An elliptical fanlight rests on an entablature which itself is supported on two Ionic columns. The mullions between the timber panelled door and sidelights have outsized console brackets to the underside of the entablature. To the first floor, directly above the doorway, is a ‘tripartite’ sashed window with ‘Georgian’ panes with plain stone pilasters and mullions, which support a stone entablature and blocking course over. Between the fanlight of the front door and the cill of the ‘tripartite’ window is a small balcony the detail of which is now obscured by ivy, but which was described in the survey of Jan. 1971 as ‘a decor[ated] cast iron balustrade’. Left and right of the front door are projecting square symmetrical bays, with moulded quoins and base course, with two, equally spaced, sashed windows with a vertical astragal. Two similar windows to first floor of each bay but with ‘Georgian’ panes.

The main house has a Bangor blue slated hipped roof with lead ridges and two central corbelled and rendered chimney stacks with four octagonal pots each.

To the right (N) of the main house is a single storey extension with two equally spaced sashed windows with a vertical astragal. The extension has blank N and W elevations.

The W elevation of this extension has a tall yellow brick chimney stack, with one pot, rising from eaves.

To the S side of the main house is a single storey gabled green house set on a low rendered ‘stall riser’. The S elevation to the main house has one sashed window, with ‘Georgian’ panes to the left on first floor, with evidence of another, now blocked, to the right.

The rear (W) of the main house has one central first floor window as S. To left at the rear is a large two storey return, perhaps a former coach house and perhaps originally the main house, though a large part of the N side has been patched with concrete breeze block. Beyond the return, on the far left of the main house, are two small gothic windows at different levels.

To the S facade ground floor of this return are three sashed windows as S on main house, with a ‘stable’ door (which now leads to a potters workshop) between the first and second windows. To the right of the third window is a small lean to porch extension with a ‘stable’ door and sashed window (like before but narrower) to its S elevation. The first floor of the return has three windows as ground floor. The W gable of the return has a large multi pane, hipped roof, oriel window to the first floor. The N elevation of the return has a sashed window to the left hand side on the ground floor with an large unusual three sided ‘bay’ to the first floor with four modern fixed light windows on a cill course. The return is finished in lined render with quoins, with plain render to the N facade, and has Bangor blue slates to its gabled roof. Cast iron RW goods.

Yard to rear paved. Outbuildings to S, including small weighbridge and brick built control house with hipped roof and internal weighing equipment (probably built in early 1900s). To the N there is a raised wedge shaped platform enclosed with a gate and iron railings. At the narrow end of the wedge there is a large cast iron tank, (?suggesting that the whole apparatus may have functioned as a sheep dip). Covered [?] well to N of house.

Historical information

A ‘U’ shaped building, marked ‘Nunsquarter House’ is shown on the OS map of 1834. At this stage the main house we see today did not exist, its site partly occupied by a long narrow wing running east to west, mainly where the return now stands, with further adjoining wings to the west and south, making up the ‘U’ shape. By the time of the revised OS map of 1860 the present main house had been built, with much the earlier ‘U’ shaped section still standing to its rear, but without the present extension to the north and the greenhouse to the south. Thus the main house we see today may be dated to some time between c.1835 and c.1860, possibly c.1840-50, with the extensions north and south probably late Victorian/Edwardian. The wings to the S and W of the original 1834 plan (and possibly originally stables) were demolished recently, thus rendering the current house ‘T’ shaped. Some of the fabric of the original house may lie within the walls of the rear return, and, conceivably, within the northern section of the main house, but to all intents and purposes, this building bears little or no resemblance to that which existed in c.1834. The original house may have been eighteenth century and may have been built by the locally prominent Allen family, who appear to have held it throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

References- Primary sources
1. PRONI D.891 [This collection of Title deeds and other papers relating mainly to lands in Echlinville and Kircubbin also contains testamentary papers of a Margaret Allen of Nunsquarter dating from 1787, which may relate to the original Nunsquarter House.]
2 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st Edition, 1834, Co. Down 18.
3 Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), p. 84-5. [c.1834]
4 PRONI VAL 1B/311A & B 1st valuation, Inishargy, c.1835.
5 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st revision, 1860, Co. Down 18.
6 PRONI 2nd valuation, Inishargy, c.1863.

Secondary sources
1 A.J. Hughes and R.J. Hannan 'Place-Names of Northern Ireland Vol. Two, County Down II- The Ards', p. 93.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Large, two storey, hipped roof, formal residence of c.1850, whose large rear return may represent the remains of an earlier (probably 18th century) dwelling. The property has some late Victorian/Edwardian extensions to both main gables. The awkward internal layout reveals something of the building's evolution.