Solitude,

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Site, on the SW side of the Belfast Road, roughly a mile N of Ballygowan, formerly occupied by a two storey farmhouse, demolished c.1987 with two modern dwellings now on the general site.

The former house was described in the 1st survey (20th Nov. 1973) as a ‘2 storey farm house with attic. Roof slated, gable ends, plain barges. Chimneys rendered. Eaves course. Walls recent pebbledash. Bevel stone quoins. Rendered base. N front has 5 first floor and 4 ground floor drop hung windows, horizontal astragals, shouldered cement surround. Central doorway, elliptic[al] arch head, 3-pane fanlight, panelled door, plain sidelights with panelled apron; cement surround. Farmyard adjoining with outbuildings of whitewashed stone rubble. Condition fair. House front about 38 feet’.

Nothing survives of the house but the outbuildings are still in evidence.

Historical information

A house, matching the plan of that on this site until recently, is shown on the OS maps of 1834 and 1858, marked ‘Solitude’ on both instances. The outbuildings to the rear of the dwelling are also present on the maps along with corn and flax mills a short distance to the west. The 1st valuation survey of 1834 notes that house along with the mill buildings were in the hands of a William Gamble and possessed the considerable rateable value of £25-7-0. The mills are also mentioned in the OS Memoirs of 1837 (under the name ‘Knockmasham Mills’), the corn mill having a ‘breast wheel 16 feet diameter’ and the flax mill a similar wheel of 14 feet. The Memoirs also note that Gamble owned three quarters of the land within the townland of Edenslate, the remainder belonging to the Mussenden family of Larchfield.

William Mussenden had acquired both house and mills by the time of the 2nd valuation (c.1863) with the whole complex leased to a John Bennett (and possessing a rateable value of £32). The Bennett family were still in possession of Solitude in 1886.
In recent times the house appears to have belonged to a family named McMordie and possibly at some point to a family named McVeigh. The current owner of one of the modern dwellings on the site states that Solitude was demolished in 1987.

A windmill is indicated near this site on Taylor’s and Skinner’s 1777 road map of the area, but by the 1830s this appears to have been abandoned.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI ‘Taylor’s and Skinner’s Maps of the Roads of Ireland’ (Dublin 1777), map 283.
2 PRONI D.354 Mussenden Papers. [These papers include documents relating Mussenden family property to 1831, however they have not been catalogued in detail.]
3 PRONI OS map 1st ed. 1834, Down 10.
4 PRONI VAL1B/316B, p.125 1st valuation Comber parish 1834.
5 ‘Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II’, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), pp. 37, 39.
6 PRONI OS map 1st rev. 1858-60, Down 10.
7 PRONI 2nd valuation Comber parish c.1863.
8 George Henry Basset ‘Co. Down Guide and Directory’ (Dublin 1886), p.282.
9 EHS HB24/16/16 1st survey notes and slide.
10 EHS OS map 167-5 (1:2500) 1973.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Site of former two storey farmhouse of possible pre 1834 origin, demolished c.1987 with two modern dwellings now on the general site. Some of the original outbuildings have survived.