Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB24/05/025

Address :
112 Ballywalter Road Millisle Newtownards Co. Down BT22 2HS

Townland:
Ballyrolly

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Survey 2:
B2

Date of Listing:
04/08/2014 00:00:00

Date of De-listing:

Current Use:
House

Former Use
House

Conservation Area:
No

Industrial Archaeology:
No

Vernacular:
No

Thatched:
No

Monument:
No

Derelict:
Yes

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OS Map No:
132/16

IG Ref:
J6000 7474

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Owner Category

Private

Exterior Description And Setting

Vacant two storey gabled block consisting of two houses, at the end of a lane near the junction of the Ballywalter Road and Woburn Road, c.1 mile S of Millisle. Front NE facade has doorway to left of centre with timber sheeted door, plain fanlight and moulded surround with keystone. Window to right of door with remains of sash frame with horizontal and vertical glazing bars. Window to left of door now covered with metal sheet. To the first floor is a gabled half dormer with decorative barges and finial. Within the half dormer are twinned sash windows (set on same cill) with semicircular arched heads and horizontal glazing bars. The right hand side of the facade has this same arrangement only handed. The SE gable is blank and the NW gable has a metal multi pane window to the right on the ground floor. Prior to the June 2014 inspection there was, at the centre of the rear elevation, a single storey gabled return which was shared between both houses. Both the SE and NW facades of the return had a sheeted door and window (as ground floor front). The rear of the return was attached to a large outbuilding. To either side of where the return joined the main houses (on the rear facade of the main building) are two first floor and two ground floor sash windows, as ground floor front. This return has now been demolished and the there is an open door to the hall with exposed brick, stone and plaster on the rear wall of the house. The external walls are finished in lined render. The roof is pitched with Bangor blue slates and three (mainly) rendered chimney stacks. Adjacent and at right angles is a long run of rendered stables. They have a hipped slated roof with three cast iron rooflights; segmental headed doors with steel horse doors. The houses and stables site in a rural settign on the perimeter of Millisle. A late twentieth century house and modern agricultural outbuildings detract from the original
setting.

Architects

Not Known

Historical Information

The OS Maps of 1833/4 and 1858-60 show a building on this site. The Dunbar estate map of 1797 also indicates houses on this general site, in the possession of Rev. Andrew Greer, the first minister of (near by) Millisle Presbyterian Church. On the same map the site is shown approached via a somewhat important looking tree-lined lane. The name ‘Ballyrolly House’ appears to suggest a building of (perhaps) some age and past local importance and it has been suggested by one author (see secondary source No.2) that a house had been on the site for over a century prior to 1797 and was once owned by a member of the once locally prominent Montgomery family. However, the two houses now present, appear wholly Edwardian, suggesting that any earlier buildings were demolished. In 1933 the then owner of this house, Lawrence Gorman, leased the property and its farm to some of the Belfast Jewish community, who, between 1938 and 1946 set up a camp for young Jewish refugees from the continent. This program was called Kindertransport. Kindertransport (Children's Transport) was the informal name of a series of rescue efforts which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940. Following the violent pogrom staged by the Nazi authorities upon Jews in Germany known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) of 9–10 November 1938, the British government eased immigration restrictions for certain categories of Jewish refugees. Spurred by British public opinion and the persistent efforts of refuge aid committees, most notably the British Committee for the Jews of Germany and the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, British authorities agreed to permit an unspecified number of children under the age of 17 to enter Great Britain from Germany and German-annexed territories (namely, Austria and the Czech lands). Private citizens or organizations had to guarantee to pay for each child's care, education, and eventual emigration from Britain. In return for this guarantee, the British government agreed to allow unaccompanied refugee children to enter the country on temporary travel visas. It was understood at the time that when the “crisis was over,” the children would return to their families. Parents or guardians could not accompany the children. The few infants included in the program were tended by other children on their transport. The first Kindertransport arrived in Harwich, Great Britain, on December 2, 1938, bringing some 200 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin which had been destroyed in the Kristallnacht pogrom. Like this convoy, most transports left by train from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and other major cities in Central Europe. Children from smaller towns and villages traveled from their homes to these collection points in order to join the transports. Jewish organizations inside the Greater German Reich—specifically the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany, headquartered in Berlin (and after early 1939, its successor organization the Reich Association of Jews in Germany), as well as the Jewish Community Organization (Kultusgemeinde) in Vienna—planned the transports. These associations generally favored children whose emigration was urgent because their parents were in concentration camps or were no longer able to support them. They also gave priority to homeless children and orphans. Children chosen for a Kindertransport convoy traveled by train to ports in Belgium and the Netherlands, from where they sailed to Harwich. (At least one of the early transports left from the port of Hamburg in Germany, while some children from Czechoslovakia were flown by plane directly to Britain). The last transport from Germany left on September 1, 1939, just as World War II began, while the last transport from the Netherlands left for Britain on May 14, 1940, the day on which the Dutch army surrendered to German forces. In all, the rescue operation brought about 9,000–10,000 children, some 7,500 of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to Great Britain. After the children's transports arrived in Harwich, those children with sponsors went to London to meet their foster families. Those children without sponsors were housed in a summer camp in Dovercourt Bay and in other facilities until individual families agreed to care for them or until hostels could be organized to care for larger groups of children. Many organizations and individuals participated in the rescue operation. Inside Britain, the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany coordinated many of the rescue efforts. Jews, Quakers, and other Christians of many denominations worked together to bring refugee children to Britain. About half of the children lived with foster families. The others stayed in hostels, schools, or on farms throughout the United Kingdom. In 1940, British authorities interned as enemy aliens about 1,000 children from the children's transport program on the Isle of Man and in other internment camps in Canada and Australia. Despite their classification as enemy aliens, some of the boys from the children's transport program later joined the British army and fought in the war against Germany. After the war, many children from the children's transport program became citizens of Great Britain, or emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Most of these children would never again see their parents, who were murdered during the Holocaust. Extract from a memoir written by a refugee who stayed at Millisle. Originally, my sister Edith and I were an emergency case, having been Kindertransported to England from Berlin. My father and mother had been arrested. Despite the fact that my father had been a volunteer for the Germans for four years in the First World War. We were lucky! In time my parents, all my uncles, aunts and a few cousins were murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz. No doubt we would have ended up the same. But we didn’t know anything about it, being safely taken care of by the Belfast Jewish community. My final destination, Belfast, was decided by the fact that the Turkish lady who sold nightdresses to my father in his Berlin shop had a sister (Mrs Wolf) in Northern Ireland who pleaded with the Jewish Committee to give us a chance when the Committee were mainly helping Jews from Nazified Austria. In June 1939 the Farm was meant to be a holiday spot for refugee children gathered in Belfast. Before September 1939 the Farm at Millisle had been a training place for young Jews from Europe to learn agricultural skills. Jews were not well versed in agricultural skills so the Farm had been set up for them. By 1939 it was painfully obvious that they were not wanted back in Europe. So the Farm, with Herr Patriasz from Hungary as a manager and teacher, was set up. Mr Patriasz, in his high boots, was a hard man, and looked it. The young trainees (chalutzim) were circulated round the different jobs on the farm so they could learn the details of each one. Cereal crops, root crops (particularly potatoes in Ireland!), kitchen gardening, dairy and chicken farming - all were given their few months’ rotation. They learned them well because in 1947, when the Farm was disbanded and most of the young workers went to Israel, they cultivated barren lands into beautiful farms. As refugees of all ages were sent out to live on this farm it also became a Refugee Settlement Farm. We refugee children were on our summer holidays and slept in large tents, one for the boys and another for the girls. As the beds were aired each day and the rains came, we never slept with the same bedding twice. After September 1939, our parents couldn’t get out of Europe, our stay on the Farm was made permanent, and we slept in more converted stables and the little farmhouse. A year later the large, long wooden hut was built and we slept in its large dormitories as we had done in the tent. It also contained a synagogue and entertainment/play rooms. I remember boys running through the sleeping quarters shouting ‘Sh, sh, Larry’s sleeping!’ and waking the baby up. The arrival of the refugees of all ages added nursery, health, laundry and kitchen training to the rota taught to the girls on the Farm. It was their child care training that affected me, one of the children on the Farm. From 1940 onwards we went to the public Elementary School in Millisle with the other children from the village. Mr Palmer took all the classes at once in one large room and Mrs Mawhinney looked after the baby infants. I was ten but began in the infants because I didn’t know any English. Under Mr Mündheim’s direction, the chalutzim built a byre out of home-made, reinforced concrete bricks. It must be the strongest byre in Ireland and will stand forever unless blown up. It is a lasting memorial to the Refugee Settlement Farm. Every Sunday a part of the Belfast Jewish community would come out to the Farm to see how we were getting on. At this time we received clothing and presents. Naturally, we always looked forward to that, especially the comics. Occasionally we went to the cinema in Donaghadee - the afternoon 3d show. Our pocket money went from 3d at the beginning to 9d and higher. Living on a farm, you work on it, even when you’re a child. Any holiday we were out in the fields. Hay-making and potato-picking were particularly busy times. When the American army passed through Northern Ireland on their way to D-Day we discovered that there were Jewish officers, soldiers and chaplains chewing gum and chocolate. We collected metal for the war effort. At secondary school, I became a member of the Army Cadet Corps and played rugby. Read the English classics, took the Junior and Senior Certificate, and gradually turned into a little English gentleman. My sister had left the Farm to become a nurse at Newtonards hospital. For all of us, that sheltered life on the Farm dissolved into ‘normality’ when the war ended. The chalutzim went to Israel. Everyone sought their relatives. Few were found because the Germans had murdered them. If any were found, the now grown-up children joined them. Robert went to the US with his mother. Harry went to Columbia. I stayed in Northern Ireland another few years and managed to persuade the Committee to let me go to Queens University and get a degree. We Jewish refugees from the Nazis will always be grateful to the Belfast Jewish community for saving our lives, guaranteeing a £100 per refugee, and looking after us so well and long. We had freedom, food and a wonderful healthy life, in the beautiful Irish countryside. What more could you want? The current owner has stated that only the stables were used as accommodation for the refugees. References- Primary sources 1 PRONI T.1242 Map of the estate of George Dunbar Esq. by J.A. Williamson 1797. [This map shows the townlands of Ballyrolly and Drumfad. A copy was held by PRONI but is at present missing. A much reduced reproduction of the map is shown on p.35 of 'Christ Church Carrowdore' by Susan E. Pack Beresford (1994).] 2 PRONI VAL 1B/32 Valuation records for the townland of Ballyrolly (Parish of Donaghadee) 1830s. 3 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps 1st Edition 1833/4. 4 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps 1st Revision 1858-60. 5 PRONI ‘Griffith’s’ valuation for the townland of Ballyrolly (Parish of Donaghadee) 1863. 6. Memoir - The Farm - Gerald Jayson (Gert Jacobowitz) - The Association of Jewish Refugees Secondary sources 1 Susan E. Pack Beresford 'Christ Church Carrowdore' (1994), p.73. 2 Grace Seymour 'Echoes of Millisle and district' (Rathfriland ?c.1980), pp.134-138, 150-151 [Notes on the history of Ballyrolly Td.] 3. Kindertransport 1938 - 1940 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Holocaust Encyclopedia

Criteria for Listing

Architectural Interest

A. Style B. Proportion C. Ornamentation

Historic Interest

Z. Rarity Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance W. Northern Ireland/International Interest R. Age S. Authenticity T. Historic Importance

Evaluation

Two storey gabled block consisting of two Edwardian houses which are substantially intact although they have lost some historic fabric and detailing, complete with long range of single storey stables to the rear. The importance of these structures lies mainly in their historic association with the Kindertransport (Children's Transport), the name for a series of rescue efforts that brought thousands of Jewish refugee children to the United kingdom from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940. This particular farm at Millisle housed over 100 refugees of all ages between 1939 and 1947. Initially they stayed in tents and then a temporary wooden structure which was dismantled in 1947. The farm became a Refugee Resettlement Farm and those who stayed there were trained in agriculture. Many of them went to the local primary school and some remained in Northern Ireland after the war finished. There is evidence that some refugees stayed in the converted stables and possibly in the two houses. These remaining buildings are a link to this important period in European history and to the significant role that Millisle played in saving many war refugees who would otherwise have been taken to concentration camps.

General Comments

Date of Survey

10 March 1998