Seaforde House, County Down

Bence-Jones, Mark. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London.  

p. 256, “(Forde/IFR) A severe but impressive early C19 block, faced in cream-coloured ashlar. Built 1816-20 by Col Mathew Forde, replacing an earlier house burnt 1816; thought to be by the English architect Peter Frederick Robinson. Of three storeys over a basement, the top storey being treated as an attic above a dentil cornice. Five bay entrance front; entablatures on console brackets over downstairs windows. The fanlighted entrance door was originally under a gracefully-curving single-storey portico with coupled Ionic columns; but in second half of C19 this gave place to a large enclosed pilastered porch, added by Col Rt Hon W.B. Forde, MP, who also added to the austerity of the facades by putting in plate glass windows. Five bay side elevation; garden front with one bay on either side of a wide curved bow; the windows in the side bays, and also the centre windows of the bow, being tripartite, except in the attic storey, those in the side bays being set in shallow recesses beneath relieving arches. Magnificent Grecian-Revival interior. Large and deep hall, with a fireplace on either side and a screen of stone columns, of the Tower of the Winds order. Staircase with handsome brass balusters in separate hall at side. Bow-fronted saloon, flanked by dining room and library. The library is a room of rare beauty, its decoration completely unaltered; the architecturally treated bookcases keeping their original graining, of a delighteful faded brown; above them are Grecian friezes of figures in low relief, made of cut paper, like the friezes in the oval drawing room at Caledon, in their original colouring of grey-green on a biscuit background. The house stands in a wonderful position between an artificial lake and an natural lough, surrounded by glorious parkland and woods with the Mourne Mountains as backdrop. At the entrance to the demesne is a Grecian triumphal arch, with a pediment and acroteria.” 

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