"White House"

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Split stone rubble ruins of a single storey rectangular gabled dwelling house with attic of c.1640s. It is set on a slight slope overlooking Slanes Bay.

Most of the gables and side walls of this house are still standing, though there is a not insubstantial section to the NW and SE missing.

The SW wall has a small, almost central doorway with a window opening to the right and evidence of another to the left. There are two small window openings at the rear, whose lintels appear to have been replaced recently, a window opening to the left on the ground floor of the SE gable and a small narrow opening to the right upper level on the NW gable.

There are small square holes at each corner and centre of the NE and SW walls, at various levels, which apparently were pistol loops.

The house was originally surrounded by a bawn, the ruined rubble walls of which are still partly visible to the SW (where there is evidence of a gateway) with a small trace to the NW. Small sections of the stonework belonging to this house appears to have been repaired recently with modern blocks.

Historical information

This house was probably built in between 1641 and 1649 by Patrick Savage, and may have been lived in by a family called Carr during part of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but was a ruin when noted by the compilers of the OS Memoirs in the mid 1830s. The significance of this building lies in the fact that it was built at a transitional period in Irish architectural history, when defended dwellings were giving way to the undefended. Thus whilst the White House looks largely domestic, it was surrounded by a bawn and had pistol loops. Further significance lies in the fact that it is an early example of a one and a half storey house whose upper level was intended as a living or sleeping areas and not primarily for storage.

References- Secondary sources
1 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st Edition, 1834, Co. Down 25.
2. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), p. 121.
3 G.F. Savage-Armstrong 'A genealogical history of the Savage family in Ulster, being a revision and enlargement of certain chapters of “The Savages of the Ards”' (London 1906), pp. 228, 336.
4 'Archaeological Survey of County Down' (Belfast, 1966), pp. 256-57.
5 Alan Gailey 'Rural houses of the north of Ireland' (Edinburgh 1984), pp. 190-91.
6 A.J. Hughes and R.J. Hannan 'Place-Names of Northern Ireland Vol. Two, County Down II- The Ards', p. 120.
7 EHS SMR DOW 25:19.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Important ruined remains of a one and a half storey house of the 1640s which, though largely domestic in nature, also included several defensive features. Sections of the stonework appear to have been repaired recently using modern regular shaped blocks.