Portmore, County Antrim

www.nihgt.org/resources/pdf/Register_of_Parks_Gardens_Demesnes-NOV20.pdf

PORTMORE, County Antrim (AP LISBURN AND CASTLEREAGH 08) AN/059 
REGISTERED GRADE B 
Residual features in registered area (16.7 acres/7.7ha) associated with an important 17th-century 
house on the south-east side of Portmore Lough (595 acres/240ha), lying on the south-east side 
of Lough Neagh, 9.1 miles (14.6km) north-west of Lisburn. The site of a residence with associated 
demesne created from 1664 by Edward Conway (1623-83), Viscount Killultagh, on the ruins of a 
fortress that Bagenal in 1586 described as an ‘old defaced castle which still bearethe the name of 
one Sir Miles Tracey’ – the land having been acquired by Viscount Killultagh’s grandfather Sir 
Fulke Conway in 1611. The new mansion, which was ‘delightfully situated near the east end of 
Lough Beg, on an eminence commanding a fine prospect of Lough Neagh, Lough Beg, Ram’s 

Register of Parks, Gardens and Demesnes of Special Historic Interest (NI) – November 2020 
Island, the Old Church Island’ was completed around 1669, but unfortunately we know 
comparatively little about it’s architecture. During the Cromwellian era it was occupied ‘for many 
years’ by Dr. Jeremy Taylor, afterwards Bishop pf Down and Dromore’. In 1803 John Moore 
Johnston (b.1747), then Conway’s agent, published an account in the Downpatrick (1803) edition 
of Heterogenea or Medley for the Benefit of the Poor, telling us that the stables however were 
‘140 feet in length, 35 in breadth and 40 feet high’ and having ‘accommodation for two troops of 
horse, with rooms for the men, marble cisterns, pumps, &c. the stables, castles, towers, &c.’ He 
also said that after the ‘whole building was taken down in 1761’ the walls were left standing 
surrounding the ‘bowling green, gardens, towers &c.’. He mentioned also ‘a little distance from 
this (on the western side of the lough) was the deer park, ‘which contained about two thousand 
acres’ and observed that ‘about thirty years ago this was one of the most romantic and delightful 
places perhaps in Ireland’ and that at that time it was ‘stocked with deer, pheasants, jays, 
turkeys, hares, rabbits and other kinds of game’ and contained ‘many large oak and other timber 
trees’ and told us that ‘Earl Conway made canals here, duck-coys, quays for pleasure broads &c’. 
From the Conway papers we know that the deer park was enclosed 1664-70, deer being 
introduced in 1665 (‘with deer and game for hunting’). There was also a duck decoy. According to 
Arthur Stringer’s remarkable manual The Experienced Huntsman (1714) based on his activities as 
keeper at Portmore, the deer park in his time covered ‘three thousand areas of land, with a 
thousand brace of red and fallow deer therein…I killed 54 brace of [fallow] bucks and 4 brace of 
[red deer] stags in a season’. By the 1770s the deer park, then much reduced in size, was still 
‘one of the most romantic and delightful places’ as Johnson remarked. The deer park boundaries 
are marked on Lendrick’s 1780 Map of Country Antrim (‘Earl of Hertford’s Deer Park’). In 1761 
the house at Portmore was demolished by Francis Seymour Conway (1718-94), Baron Conway, 
later 1st Marquess of Hertford), with the timber and stone ‘sold out to different purchasers by 
private sale’ and the land subsequently let for farming. In 1771 a ‘neat lodge’ was reportedly 
built for Conway in the park and later this was owned by Mr. Jebb and Mr. Mairs. Much of the 
land of the demesne was cleared by the end of the 18th century save a section forming a 
peninsula with the lough which was enclosed by a wall; this was called the Hogg, or Little Deer- 
park and parts of the wall are still visible. This park too was cultivated and leased to tenants from 
about 1804. Around the house some of the garden features, including the wall around the 
bowling green and some towers were left standing and were apparently still visible in the early 
19th century. Nothing conspicuous is depicted on the 1832 OS map, however, the name 
‘Portmore House’ merely designating a small dwelling, while the OS Memoirs stated ‘nothing 
now remains this once healthy and splendid seat, but the wall surrounding the bowling green, a 
few pear and other fruit trees and some dilapidated patches of the castle and stabling walls’. All 
obvious features of the house and its large associated stable block have long vanished, but 
surviving archaeological features include a rectangular walled garden ((1.25 acres/0.5ha) and a 
square raised platform on its south-east side (225ft x 234ft (or 69m x 71m). Much else no doubt 
also remains in an area of rich archaeological potential. Private area. SMR: ANT 62:7 site of 
house.