Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB20/04/042 D

Address :
Shane's Castle (Mansion) Shane's Castle Park Antrim Co Antrim BT41 4NE

Townland:
Shane's Castle Park

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Survey 2:
Record Only

Date of Listing:

Date of De-listing:

Current Use:
Country House

Former Use
Country House

Conservation Area:
No

Industrial Archaeology:
No

Vernacular:
No

Thatched:
No

Monument:
No

Derelict:
No

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OS Map No:
95/12

IG Ref:
J1117 8806

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Owner Category

Private

Exterior Description And Setting

A two-storey rendered house in neo-Georgian style attached to an extensive range of basalt outbuildings. Main entrance faces north. North elevation is symmetrical: consists of a central entrance bay, three windows wide, recessed behind projecting end bays, each two windows wide and one window deep to the front return walls. Hipped roofs of Bangor blue slates in regular courses; central flat-roofed dormer; prominent ashlar stone chimneys with moulded cornices and modern pots. Walls are rendered with a fine roughcast, with moulded rendered plinth; moulded cornice; plain coping to parapet. Concealed gutters, with cast iron downpipes and hoppers. Windows are rectangular timber sliding sash, vertically hung, 6 over 6 with horns, set in moulded surrounds with projecting cills; ground floor windows taller than first floor. Doorway is set in a continuous semi-circular headed raised surround with coved front; contains a pair of double doors, timber panelled, flanked by fluted Ionic pilasters surmounted by a radial semi-circular fanlight; concrete doorstep; flagged area outside doorway. Extending to the right and set well back is a lower two-storey flat-roofed link block connecting with the outbuildings. Link block contains two windows, one to each floor, sashed 3 over 3 with horns; one window, sashed 6 over 6 as previous, in the west wall of the main house, and a circular window in west wall overlooking the link block. East elevation is two-storey, three-bay, of similar walling and window detailing to the entrance front. Projecting from it is a low iron gate and railings of plain character. Rear elevation is of similar character to previous elevations: two-storey, symmetrical; consists of a slightly projecting central entrance bay with the walls to each side of it three windows wide. Central entrance bay contains a rectangular tripartite window to the first floor with a doorcase to the ground floor which comprises a pair of rectangular double doors flanked by side lights and surmounted by a semi-circular radially glazed fanlight over a deep panelled frieze; armorial plaque set in wall over fanlight, reused from an earlier building on the demesne. Central openings in each flanking wall contain doorways, also with an old armorial plaque set over each. Flagged patio area bounded by curving hedges outside French windows. Extending to the left and set well back is the lower two-storey flat-roofed link block connecting with the basalt outbuildings. Windows of link are sashed 3 over 3 as previous; those of west wall of main house are 6 over 6 as previous. SETTING: The house stands within a large demesne, connected to the south-east corner of an extensive range of outbuildings and adapting part of the outbuildings as its service wing, with that part of the outbuildings identified within the large enclosed yard by the use of rendered walls instead of masonry finish. Its front overlooks a gravelled forecourt bounded along the west side by the long two-storey entrance block of the outbuildings, lined by segmental arched garages and surmounted by a clock turret. Forecourt approached by a driveway from the east and entered by a gateway, described below. Rear and east elevations of house overlook a garden laid out with lawns; garden bounded to east and south by walls. At the north-east corner of the bounding wall of the garden is a small low polygonal turret base, a surviving portion of a taller turret built in the 1860s which terminated a wing of the outbuildings demolished to make way for the new mansion. Near the south-east corner of the same bounding wall is the surviving portion of a ha-ha. Gardens to south laid out with some formality, with a gateway in south wall placed on axis with rear entrance of house. Kitchen gardens lie to west, with potting sheds of no special interest, and more recent green houses. Extensive views from the house, of demesne parkland to the north, and toward the old Shane's Castle ruins on the shore of Lough Neagh to the west. GATEWAY: a pair of square sandstone ashlar piers with panelled faces, moulded plinth and cornices with swept caps, each surmounted by a large figure of a wlion in what looks like Coade stone. Contains a pair of vehicular gates flanked by smaller pedestrian gates, all with spear heads; secondary piers of open ironwork are surmounted by cast iron coronets.

Architects

Jury, Arthur Blackwood & Jury

Historical Information

Built in 1958 for Lord O'Neill to the designs of Arthur Jury, of Blackwood and Jury, architects of Belfast; formal gardens to the south laid out from the 1960s. The house was built to replace a Victorian predecessor designed by architects Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon which was built in 1865 on a site immediately to the north, facing this house across the stable yard, but which was maliciously burnt in 1922; that Victorian castle was itself a replacement for the original Shane's Castle which was accidentally burnt in 1816. A proposal to replace the Victorian castle with a neo-Georgian house designed by the English architect Oliver Hill in 1938 was not carried out. The line of the main driveway to the east appears for the first time on the OS map of 1858; gateway probably contemporary with it, and dating probably from the 1830s to 1840s. References – Primary Sources 1. OS Map 1858, Co Antrim 49. 2. Architect's drawings dated 26 November 1956 by Blackwood and Jury, in possession of the owner of the house in 2000. 3. Belfast Telegraph, 28 August 1958 (photograph). Secondary Sources 1. UAHS, West Antrim (Belfast, 1970), p 21. 2. J.M. Robinson, The Latest Country Houses (London, 1984), pp 185-6, 193, 225. 3. G. Stamp, Britain in the Thirties (Architectural Design Profile No 24, London, ND), p 35 (includes an illustration of Oliver Hill's unbuilt design for Shane's Castle, 1938). 4. Northern Ireland Heritage Gardens Committee, Heritage Gardens Inventory (Belfast, 1992), AN/064.

Criteria for Listing

Architectural Interest

Not listed

Historic Interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is a good and convincing example of a neo-Regency house of post-2nd World War date, designed in a distinctly proportioned classical manner. It exhibits consistent detailing throughout, and retains all its original features to the exterior and interior. It enjoys an unspoiled setting in an important demesne and together with its adjoining late Georgian outbuildings forms an interesting group. As a fairly recent building, however, it does not been the listing criteria on age.

General Comments

This record was originally numbered as HB20/04/057.

Date of Survey

02 December 2000