Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB24/05/018

Address :
Woburn House Ballywalter Road Drumfad Millisle Newtownards Co Down BT22

Townland:
Drumfad

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Survey 2:
B2

Date of Listing:
20/12/1976 00:00:00

Date of De-listing:

Current Use:
Office

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:
132/16

IG Ref:
J6046 7457

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Owner Category

Central Govt

Exterior Description And Setting

Woburn House is a somewhat sprawling two storey Italianate Mansion of c.1865, set on the coast (on the W side of the Ballywalter Road), c.1 miles S of Millisle. In 1956 the building was converted to a borstal and is presently a training centre for prison officers. During both of these incarnations it has been greatly extended and thoroughly modernised internally. The immediate surrounding grounds have also been extensively developed in recent times and there are modern houses and other structures to the N, S and W. The building has a complicated plan form. It appears to have begun life as roughly ‘T’ shaped with the main wing running NW to SE and a shorter wing running NE to SW, but the shorter wing has been greatly extended to the SW and other modern structures have been added to the rear of the building. The facade is rendered, lined and painted, the roof hipped and Bangor blue slated, with rendered and corbelled chimneys. Most of the windows have maintained the original style of frames but now have security features including toughened [?bullet proof] glass. The long main wing has a central three storey, square, projecting tower. To the ground level of the tower is a port-cochere with semicircular arches and rusticated render with simple decoration to the arch heads and course between ground and first floor level. The first floor has Serliana windows to each face with Ionic columns as mullions and square Ionic columns to the wall corners. The second floor has twinned semicircular arch headed windows to each face with composite order columns as mullions and at corners. The windows also have brackets and a pediment. The window on the SW (rear) face of the second floor is false. The tower finishes with a hipped and leaded pavilion roof with pediments. Between the first and second floors is a balustraded course which is carried as a parapet around the rest of the original building. Dentilled cornice below parapet. The windows to the rest of the NE face of the long wing are all sash with decorative brackets and cornices to those on the first floor and similar brackets supporting a segmental pediment to the shorter windows on the second floor. The NW end of the NE facade of the long wing finishes with a full height curved bay (containing three windows on each floor). At the SE end of the long wing is a similar curved bay. To the SE of this the long wing intersects with the shorter wing running NE to SW (the horizontal of the ‘T’ shape). This wing generally follows the style of the rest of the building, though two of the windows on the SE facade are tripartite and there are smaller single storey curved bays on the SE and NE facades, both with balustraded parapets. All windows on this wing rest on cill courses with supporting brackets and string course below first floor brackets. Decorated doorway to far left on SE facade with semicircular headed fanlight, sidelights, (partly) arched cornice and brackets. To the SW facade of the short wing a single storey gabled section has been added at some later date (possibly c.1890-1900) and ‘modernised’ in recent times. The hipped roof of the short wing contains many small dormers with curved (segmental) roofs, which form segmental pediments over their small sash windows. The rear of the entire building has been greatly extended in recent times, with many unsympathetic functional looking one and two storey structures with a mixture of flat and gabled roofs.

Architects

McCurdy, John

Historical Information

The present Woburn House was built in c.1865, to designs by John McCurdy of Dublin, for the then owner of the Woburn estate, George Orr Dunbar. The Dunbar family had been proprietors of the townlands of Drumfad and Ballyrolly since the eighteenth century. Sometime between 1797 and c.1830 (possibly c.1815), George’s uncle, John Gilmore Dunbar, had built a substantial residence on this site (which he named Woburn) for use as a summer residence. Previous to this the site had been occupied by two small farm houses. The original Woburn House is shown on the OS Map of 1834 as a long rectangular building with wings to the rear and further structures (probably stables) to the NW. An undated water-colour shows the house with a hipped roof, large end bays, smaller centre bay and castellated parapet. John Gilmore Dunbar died childless in 1846 and Woburn passed to his nephew George Orr, who adopted the name Dunbar in accordance with his uncle’s will. George was a former MP and Lord Mayor of Belfast and in the 1860s used his not inconsiderable fortune to rebuilt Woburn House as an Italianate mansion. It is uncertain how much (if any) of the fabric of the previous residence survived the rebuild. George died in 1875 and upon the death of his daughter Georgiana Dunbar-Buller and her husband Charles in the early 1920s, Woburn passed to a distant cousin of Georgiana’s (through her mother’s family), Reynell James Pack-Beresford. The house remained in Pack-Beresford hands until the 1950s, when the burden of death duties forced Reynell James’s son, Arthur Reynell Pack-Beresford to put the property up for sale. In 1956 Woburn House was bought by the Northern Ireland Ministry of Finance and converted to a boys’ borstal. In more recent times the property has become a training centre for prison officers. During both of these recent incarnations the house has been progressively added to, ‘modernised’ and adapted to properly serve its new functions. The immediate grounds around it have been developed also and they now contain many modern dwellings and other more functional looking structures. 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, Down 7. 4 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps 1st Revision 1858-60, Down 7. 5 PRONI ‘Griffith’s’ valuation for the townland of Ballyrolly (Parish of Donaghadee) 1863. Secondary sources 1 Susan E. Pack Beresford 'Christ Church Carrowdore' (1994), pp.34-41. 2 Grace Seymour 'Echoes of Millisle and District' (Rathfriland ?c.1980), p.134-151 [Notes on the history of Drumfad Td. inc. a photograph of Woburn house c.1910-20].

Criteria for Listing

Architectural Interest

A. Style B. Proportion C. Ornamentation H-. Alterations detracting from building

Historic Interest

X. Local Interest V. Authorship

Evaluation

Large sprawling two storey Italianate mansion of the 1860s, built on the site of an earlier house and now greatly altered. It has been modernised internally and extended at the rear. The building is now in government ownership and whole site has been developed, with modern dwellings and other structures having been built within the former house grounds.

General Comments

Date of Survey

05 March 1998