Historic Buildings Record · Northern Ireland
Swimming Pool
Mount Stewart, Ards and North Down, Northern Ireland
The record
- Designation
- Record only (not listed)
- Grade
- Record Only
- Type
- Estate Related Structures
- Date of construction
- 1920 - 1939
- Address
- Swimming Pool, Portaferry Road, Mount Stewart, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT22 2RU(?)
- Townland
- Mount Stewart
- Council
- Ards and North Down
- Country
- Northern Ireland
- Coordinates
- 54.54927, -5.60482
- Date of survey
- 17 November 1997
- HB reference
- HB24/04/095
Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.
David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesNational Library of Scotland
Shown on 4 historical map sheets, the earliest the 1891 "Ireland 16" (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).
The Department's description
Exterior description and setting
Overgrown remains of a 1930s kidney shaped open air swimming pool with the remains of arched gateways and surrounding walling. The pool, which was originally part of the Mount Stewart estate is located on the western side of the Portaferry Road, west of the estate itself.
The pool itself is kidney shaped and is now filled in. It has a low banked stone stepped terrace around it with remains of rubble built semicircular arched gateways to the S and E set into a low ‘rounded’ rubble wall. Little can be seen of any of these features, bar sections of the arches, due to rampant vegetation.
On the N side of the pool there used to be a stone built pavilion with ‘round headed doorways in projecting return wings at each end of a colonnaded loggia’, but this has been removed recently (c.1995). A set of stone seats, with carvings depicting swans among rushes, also formerly located at the pool side, are within the reception building at Mount Stewart Estate.
There is a concrete gun emplacement overlooking the rocky shoreline to the immediate SW side of the swimming pool complex, constructed during World War II.
On the S side of the track leading from the Portaferry Road to the pool there is a memorial, in the shape of a Celtic cross, to the departed members of the former household staff of Mount Stewart.
Historical information
This swimming pool was built in 1937-8, by Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry. Prior to this there had been a ‘bathing house’ on this site at least since the 1780s, and account books reveal that £259 was spent on the facility between 1802 and 1804. A ‘wooden bathing house’ is marked on the 1834 OS Map, and a boat house and ‘landing stage’ were present in later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The ‘pool’ has been derelict for some years and is now the property of the National Trust.
References- Primary sources
1 PRONI D.654/H1/3 Londonderry Papers- Pages of accounts estate and private for Robert Stewart 1781-1789
2 PRONI D.654/H2/3-4 Londonderry Papers- Estate ledgers with loose indexes
3 PRONI OS/6/3/11/1 Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st Edition, 1834, Co. Down 11
4 PRONI OS/6/3/11/2 Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st Revision, 1860, Co. Down 11
5 PRONI OS/6/3/11/3 Ordnance Survey Maps, 1901, Co Down 11
6 PRONI OS/6/3/11/4 Ordnance Survey Maps, 1921, Co Down 11
Secondary sources
1 Anne Casement, 'Mount Stewart Landscape Study' (The National Trust Northern Ireland Region, 1995), pp.17, 23, 38, 40
Criteria for listing: architectural interest
Not listed
Criteria for listing: historic interest
Not listed
Evaluation
Overgrown remains of a 1930s kidney shaped open air swimming pool with the remains of arched gateways and surrounding walling.
Nearby in the register
- Mount Stewart & garden wallsCountry Houseunder 1 mi
- Stables at Mount StewartHouseunder 1 mi
- Old gas works at Mount StewartGas Worksunder 1 mi
- Clay Gate LodgeGates/ Screens/ Lodgesunder 1 mi
Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.