Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB24/04/095

Address :
Swimming Pool Portaferry Road Mount Stewart Newtownards Co. Down BT22 2RU(?)

Townland:
Mount Stewart

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Survey 2:
Record Only

Date of Listing:

Date of De-listing:

Current Use:
Estate Related Structures

Former Use
Bathing House

Conservation Area:
No

Industrial Archaeology:
No

Vernacular:
No

Thatched:
No

Monument:
No

Derelict:
Yes

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OS Map No:
149/10

IG Ref:
J5503 6941

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Owner Category

Heritage

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.

Architects

Not Known

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

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.

General Comments

Date of Survey

17 November 1997