By Ryan Sands
The former Seaforde residence of Northern Ireland’s last Prime Minister is up for sale for £1.35m. Highlands, a B1 listed building on a nine-acre site on Farranfad Road, was once home to Brian Faulkner, the Ulster Unionist Party leader who held the top Stormont role between March 1971 and March 1972.
Subsequently elevated to the House of Lords, he died at the age of 56, following a riding accident during a hunt outside Saintfield. Estate agents Tim Martin’s website describes the property – which has six bedrooms and four reception areas – as an ‘imposing period residence thought to have been built in the early 1840s in the Tudoresque style.’
‘Highlands is thought to have been built in the early 1840s by Colonel Gordon, who is believed to have acted as agent to the Forde family of Seaforde Estate,’ it reads. ‘The residence is believed to have stayed in the future generations of the Gordon family to the 1930s, when it was acquired by Mr. John Corbett. It was sold in 1960 to Brian Faulkner MP, last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, then to the Bell Family and subsequently sold to the current vendors in 2007.’
The Department for Communities’ Buildings Database describes it as a ‘large, irregular, two-storey, slightly Tudoresque, slightly Celtic baronial, gentleman’s residence of c.1840 with a profusion of gabled projections and half-dormers.’
‘The style of the building bears a close resemblance to Delamont House after its c.1840s remodelling – as both the latter and Highlands belonged to members of the Gordon family during this period, both may be the work of the same architect,’ it states.
The guide price for the property is £1.3m.
