Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB23/14/005 A

Address :
Seacourt 5 & 6 Seacourt Maxwell Drive Maxwell Road Bangor Co Down BT20 3LE

Townland:
Corporation

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Survey 2:
B+

Date of Listing:
27/01/1975 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:
No

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OS Map No:
115/12

IG Ref:
J4958 8240

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Owner Category

Private

Exterior Description And Setting

A grand symmetrical, classically-styled, two-storey three-bay house over concealed basement, built c.1865, located to the north side of Bangor, overlooking the sea. The house is square-on-plan, with porch to east, central bowed bay to north, and recent townhouse extension to south (rear). U-shaped hipped natural slate roof with leaded hips around flat central valley with lantern; five cement rendered chimneystacks with corniced caps. Gutters are concealed behind an eaves cornice on console brackets with leaded blocking course, all over a narrow frieze with set with small circular panels. Cast-iron downpipes. Walling is cement rendered, band rusticated to ground floor, ruled and lined to first floor over a projecting string. Windows are 1/1 horned timber sashes, square-headed to first floor and generally segmental-headed to ground floor, with the exception of those to east entrance elevation (see below). Generally, windows are set in shallow recesses with panelled aprons and have moulded architrave surrounds, all sweeping to lower end of jambs, those to ground floor also with lugs. First floor windows also have a decorative reeded keyblock and frieze with rosette detail. Cills are sandstone. Principal (entrance) elevation faces east and is symmetrically arranged with three openings to each floor about a central porch. The porch is classically styled with dentil cornice and triglyph frieze, with door and sidelights framed by egg-and-dart corner pilasters, and with a central pedimented sandstone projection on fluted Doric columns. The door is four-panelled with bolection moulding and cast-iron ironmongery; archivolt on impost mouldings and plain round arch fanlight; panelled spandrels. The porch is surmounted by a fretted sandstone parapet, extending to form balconettes to first floor side bay windows; it has a window to each cheek. It has a sandstone threshold accessed by a stone platform further accessed by two sandstone steps, enclosed to either side by a balustrade. South (rear) elevation has a window to each floor at right side. To centre is a slight projection, three-storeys high, comprising mezzanine and attic storey over a ground floor. To left side is the gabled truncated remains of a former three-storey return, two bays of which have been removed. All abutted by a modern two-storey townhouse. The exposed section of the gable is blank; the west elevation of the return is flush with the main body of the house and has a round arched window to attic (breaking eaves), and a window to mezzanine; the ground floor is abutted by a timber conservatory. The west elevation is two windows wide and is extended to south by the return (see above), separated from it by a lesene strip. It is partially abutted to ground floor by the conservatory. The conservatory is of timber construction consisting of moulded transoms and mullions, and round arched lights over a rendered dwarf plinth wall; hipped roof having central bitumen-covered flat with central polygonal timber lantern having stained glass lights. Double-leaf timber panelled and glazed doors to west and north, each beneath a panelled timber canopy supported on fluted columns. The north (sea-facing ) elevation is symmetrically arranged about a central bowed bay with ground floor windows formed in sandstone, and fretwork balcony over stone brackets to first floor. Bowed bay has five windows to ground floor and four windows to first floor; two windows to either side at each floor. Grilles to basement tunnel. Setting The house is set within extensive grounds, now mostly occupied by modern housing developments. A formal walled garden remains to west (HB23/14/005B) and there is a lawned terrace with tennis court to north. The garden contains a number of flights of stone steps, and gravel paths. To east is a tarmac parking area. The original entrance avenue has been blocked and entrance is now via a modern cul-de-sac (Maxwell Drive) from Maxwell Road. The original gate piers (HB23/14/005C) remain as the entrance to a separate cul-de-sac (Seacourt Gardens) at east. The entire site is bounded by high stone boundary walls, part of which is listed (HB23/14/005D). Roof: Natural slate Walling: Cement rendered Windows: Timber RWG: Cast iron

Architects

Not Known

Historical Information

The area of coastline chosen by Foster Connor, Belfast linen merchant as a site for his mansion ‘Seacourt’, was undeveloped open fields at the time of the 1858 ordnance survey map. ‘Seacourt’ was built c1865, in a prime location, the rest of Princetown Road subsequently being laid out in the decades to follow. The architect is unknown but James Hamilton and Charles Lanyon have both been suggested. The builders were Henrys who also built the Albert Bridge in Belfast. (Patton, p.165, Information Leaflet) The house is not listed in Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64) but does appear in the first fieldbook of Annual Revisions dating from 1866, giving a probable start date for construction of c.1865. It is listed in the Annual revisions of 1866 as a house, with outoffices and gate lodge added later, buildings initially valued at £80. By 1870 this has been revised to £180, suggesting that the house and outbuildings were under construction during this period. In 1877 the valuation is revised again to £187 suggesting that Connor continued to make improvements. He went to considerable expense in the construction of the house and brought a craftsman from Italy to execute the main ceiling mouldings and the impressive ceiling dome. (Patton, p.165, Information Leaflet) In 1860 the Journal of the Society of Arts named Foster Connor and Co as one of the six principal linen manufacturers in Belfast. He was also a keen yachtsman. (Journal of Society of Arts; Hunt’s Yachting Magazine) Connor died in 1881 and the house then passed to his son Charles C Connor but was bought by Samuel Cleland Davidson in 1895 for £5,000. Davidson carried out some repairs and alterations, including the installation of central heating and the installation of the timber pulpit staircase and as a consequence the valuation of the property was raised to £285 in 1915. This was lowered to £260 following an appeal. (Will of Foster Connor; Annual Revisions, Information Leaflet, Haines, p.2) A number of photographs survive from the period that Davidson, a keen photographer, was in residence showing the family in front of the house and enjoying their private bathing box and coastal balcony. (Haines, p.44-5, 59, 62) Samuel Davidson was born in 1846 into a family of mill-owners. After a period spent working in the family business and in a surveyor’s office, Davidson took the opportunity to travel to India to join a cousin who was working on a tea plantation. At the age of 17 he sailed to Calcutta carrying twenty gold sovereigns, a shotgun, a pistol, a fiddle and a camera; photography and music being two of his main interests. Davidson learned the rudiments of tea cultivation under his cousin and set about modernising the book-keeping procedures and designing his own bungalow, which was soon copied by others. He was put in charge of his own estate at 19 and began to improve production and efficiency, all the while experimenting with ideas that led to a patent for a drying machine in 1869 and a tea roller in 1870. In 1875 he developed an improved tea drier and returned to Belfast to have the prototype made, transporting this and a rotary hoe he had also invented around the Indian tea plantations. Having received many orders, he returned to Belfast, eventually setting up his own factory at Bridge End in 1881 to manufacture driers, using a fan, again of his own invention. The firm was eventually named ‘Sirocco’ after the drying desert wind. The fans were later used by British, German and US Navies in the boiler rooms of their ships and by the London Underground and the Mersey Tunnel. Prior to independence India was supplied with 70% of its tea processing machinery by Sirocco. (McCormick and Bleakley, p.21-5) There is a tradition that a basement tunnel under the floor of the house, originally part of the heating system, was used for the storage of guns in April 1914 during the Larne gun-running operation. (First survey information) Haines suggests that members of the Davidson family were involved, using their Nordenfelt car.“Some estimates have suggested that in 1914 there were only about one thousand cars in the north of Ireland and that the Ulster Unionist Council managed to arrange for half of these to be at Larne...to receive the twenty thousand rifles destined for the Ulster Volunteer Force”. (Haines, p.59) Census returns of 1901 and 1911 show Samuel Davidson, engineer, at Seacourt with his wife and some of his adult children, together with a small staff comprising a parlour maid, housemaid, cook and kitchenmaid. (1901, 1911 census) Davidson was an inventor all his life and registered over 120 patents. The Ulster museum still hold a kerosene pump that was used to take water from a well at Seacourt to a tank in the roof, simultaneously operating a butter churn. (Patton, p.166) He died in 1921, shortly after being knighted. (McCormick and Bleakley, p.21-5) On Davidson’s death the house passed to his younger daughter, Kathleen Hadow, both of his sons having died, one serving with the Ulster Division at the Somme. During the Second World War, Mrs Hadow arranged for the house to be used as a convalescent home for officers, receiving about two hundred and fifty patients. Mrs Hadow was later awarded the MBE for her services. (Information Leaflet) When Mrs Hadow died in 1970 the house passed to her daughter and was then sold in 1972 to the Down County Education Committee for use as a Teachers’ Centre. When the house was sold by the Education and Library Board in 1989 it was divided into two apartments and some development has since taken place within its former curtilage. (Information leaflet, Patton, p.165-6; Planning appeal ruling) References: Primary Sources 1.PRONI OS/6/3/2/2 – Second Edition OS map 1858 2.PRONI OS/6/3/2/3 – Third Edition OS Map 1901 1.PRONI OS/6/3/2/4 – Fourth Edition OS Map 1919-26 2.PRONI OS/6/3/2/5 – Fifth Edition OS Map 1939 3.PRONI VAL/12/B/23/7A-K – Annual Revisions (1866-99) 4.PRONI VAL/12/B/23/9A-S – Annual Revisions (1900-1930) 5.PRONI D3642/A/3/3 – Diary recording purchase of Seacourt by SC Davidson in 1895 6.PRONI Will of Foster Connor died 5/12/1881 7.Hunt’s Yachting Magazine, Vol 18, 1869, p.483 8.Journal of Society of Arts, Vol 8, Issue 365-416, p.201, 1860 9.1901 census online 10.1911 census online 11.Planning appeal ruling W/2004/0261/F - 8th June 2005 Secondary Sources 1.First Survey Information 2.Haines, K “North Down Memories, Photographs 1860s-1960s” Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2000 3.‘History of Seacourt’, Information leaflet dated October 1976 4.McCormick, T.J. and Bleakley, Nancy “Sir Samuel Davidson and Seacourt” in Patterson, D.C. ed.“Bangor Life, An Historical View of People, Places and Events in North Down, Volume 1” Bangor Historical Society, 2008 5.Patton, M, “Bangor, An Historical Gazetteer” Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1999

Criteria for Listing

Architectural Interest

A. Style B. Proportion C. Ornamentation D. Plan Form H-. Alterations detracting from building I. Quality and survival of Interior J. Setting K. Group value

Historic Interest

W. Northern Ireland/International Interest

Evaluation

Seacourt is a two-storey three-bay Italianate house built c.1865, possibly to designs by Charles Lanyon or James Hamilton, although this is unconfirmed. Although now subdivided the fine detailing and original fabric survive. It links with a major linen manufacturer, Foster Connor and Co, are representative of the mid-nineteenth century development of Bangor and the North Down coast by the mercantile classes, encouraged by improved rail links and the industrial successes of the era. The association with Samuel Cleland Davidson of the Sirocco Works is also of note. There is group value with its boundary wall (HB23/14/005D), gate piers (HB23/14/005C) and the remains of a walled garden (HB23/14/005B). The setting has been severely compromised due to development of the site, which has resulted in the demolition of parts of the associated structures and spilt the house from its original entrance. Seacourt remains an important house in terms of the architectural context and historic development of the area.

General Comments

Please note this record has been renumbered it was previously recorded as HB23/14/005

Date of Survey

14 April 2010