WHAT THE PAPERS SAY
The following extracts appeared in an article in
The Bangor News 11th May 2000

Genteel Living in house with wealth of History

BILL BLACK, in the latest of his series on
unusual and beautiful homes, visits a cottage
that has become a manor house.

Butch the cat is as moth-eaten a little creature as you
could find. He's light grey in colour, 20 years old, toothless
and as deaf as a post.

But the three Dutch, four Germans, two Italians, two Americans and two French visitors who stayed at Blackwood House recently, where Butch holds court, just simply loved him.
Butch sums up the ambivalence of Blackwood House, a bed and breakfast residence on the outskirts of Bangor.
It is trapped not just in a time-warp but by the traffic, flowing past the Balloo and Bloomfield roads.
Yet it is an island of peace and comfort, with its long-established, higgledy-piggedly gardens lapping round the walls like a protective sea. Once within its doors it feels like everybody's home.
It was built nearly 400 years ago and was once surrounded by 136 acres of farm land where cattle, pigs and chickens roamed. Years later a fair stretch of Bloomfield Housing Executive estate was built on the land.
Now the lovely old house has little more than a half-acre of its former glory as a sheltered and sunny garden left.
David McCready lives in this enchanting place. The house was typical of its type when built, a long thatched-roofed single-storey cottage.
Over the years it has been worked on and altered until now it has the appearance of a two storey mock-Tudor building with a bridge, containing one of the four living rooms, leading to "The Stables", the spacious annexe, built by David and his late father, Robert.
It has a feel of genteel grandeur. From once being a two or three bedroom cottage it has grown to contain seven bedrooms, four living rooms, a dining room, two kitchens and six en-suite shower/bathrooms.
One of the supports for the older part of the upper floors consists of a length of 24 ft long steel rail track. It's dated 1877 and was originally part of the West Cumbria Rail service. A railway sleeper runs across another ceiling.
Surrounded by its hedges and tall flowering trees and bushes and tucked away down its drive, it is surprising quiet.
The House was originally called Hayford and got its later name from Blackwood Bray, a short stretch of road beside the Savoy in Bangor.
David McCready's great-grandfather Nathaniel had five daughters and to keep an eye on them, it is said, he built six houses in a row. He lived in one of them and the daughters resided in the others.
Sign
The houses are still standing. When he bought Hayford he renamed it Blackwood. David still has the Hayford house sign.
Though David was born in England and still has an English accent, he considers himself an Ulsterman through and through.
England was just one of the many places he lived in with his parents on their travels across Europe and further afield
His father Robert was a pilot during the Second World War. He joined the R.A.F. at the age of 19 and eventually rose to the rank of Wing Commander. He was involved in no less than 27 campaigns. He retired in 1969 and died in 1996.
The German airforce bomber wasn't necessarily seeking Robert when, unable to reach Belfast because of heavy ack-ack fire, it jettisoned its bomb load over the McCready farm.
A 1,000lb mine exploded on the land and destroyed the farm's well and sole water supply. Later the remnants of 36 fire incendiaries were found around the farm.
One missile crashed through the roof into a bedroom and on to the dining room. It failed to explode and David still has it for use as a doorstop.
The house has been in other wars. During the 1798 Rebellion when - hard to believe today- Protestants and Roman Catholics united in a bid to force the English out of Ireland, the house was ravaged by fire set by the English Redcoats.
The Redcoats stormed the district, searching every dwelling for weapons. Any pike or sabre found was classed as an act of rebellion, the owner of such being accused of being a United Irishman. Many of the locals sided or were injured during the rampaging.
The thatched roof of what was then Hayford was set alight destroying most of it. Hundreds of years later when David and his father extended the kitchen to install an Aga they uncovered extensive burn marks on the old original stone floor. Another skirmish in the still ongoing Irish troubles.
The McCready name was actually McCreary, but (changed) during a census taken by the English soldiers who, unable to understand the Irish brogue, put down McCready instead. And so it stayed.
Move
When his father died in 1996 David and his brother Chris, who is involved in a computer business and lives in England, bought out their brother Nick's share of the property.
With David's father stationed so often abroad, the house had been sold and out of the family's hands for a period of 15 years.
It was on Robert's return to retire in the Province in 1969 that they discovered with delight the house for sale again.
They purchased it for £3,600! You couldn't double glaze its windows for that today.
The dominant colour in Blackwood is white both inside and out with the Tudor sections painted black. The rooms are spacious and the bathrooms huge.
The culprit responsible for the fire in Ballyhome Windmill, as detailed in my article last week, "Mad MIck on Windmill Hill", was surprisingly revealed by no less a person as David himself. His great-grandfather Nathaniel actually owned and worked the mill at the time of the fire in 1922.
David met the arsonist in a bar in Bangor some years ago when an old man. Unaware of David's identity, but apparently long of memory and bitterness, he boasted of the time he deliberately set fire to the mill
The incident occurred because of the man's dislike of Nathaniel, who had sacked the then teenager whom he had caught thieving.
When another piece of land belonging to Blackwood was taken by the DoE to widen the main road some landscaping was undertaken in the garden.
The house is now sheltered by beech, cherry and palm trees and for those who know the significance, an Acacia tree.

In the 1798 Rebellion
the thatched roof was set alight

 

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