[Extracts from Malone House, by W A Maguire, Hugh Dixon, Robert McKinstry, Craig Wallace and Robert Scott; published by the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society in 1983.]
[Part of essay on The Three Houses by Hugh Dixon]:
Even before inheriting his uncle's property in 1821, [William
Wallace Legge, builder of the third house on the site] had been
fascinated with buildings and landscape. A sketchbook survives
from 1816 in which he made a series of over seventy neat pencil
drawings of topographical subjects in the Malone area and the
Lagan valley, and also around the home of another uncle and aunt,
Anthony and Marcella Semple at Malahide. Although his command
of perspective was erratic, and his sense of composition varied,
there are several drawings which show his interest in the use
of landscape to enhance buildings, and also to give them privacy.
At Malone he took the opportunity to turn paper ideas into reality.
His predecessors found it convenient to live close to the main
coach road between Belfast and Dublin. Their house was clearly
visible at the end of a short drive. Such simplicity, or rather,
lack of subtlety held little appeal for W. W. Legge. He chose
to build anew on the site of the old fort. Nevertheless the public
thoroughfare still seemed too close for proper privacy, and so,
with an uncomplicated efficiency which might be expected of the
son of an army officer who happened to be High Sheriff for the
county at the right moment, he moved the road away. Though unimpressed
with the remains of the fort, Legge recognised the advantages
of the site. His new entrance front was to face a wide prospect
past the old house to the north-west, while the main rooms were
to enjoy views across the Lagan valley.
The house has not been precisely dated, nor has the involvement
of any architect been discovered, but such evidence as there is
suggests that the building was erected in the late 1820s. As Trevor
Carleton has shown (Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1976, 62-3),
there is a map of 1825 with the outline of a house - a plain rectangle
with a shallow bow on one long side - superimposed on the earthworks
of the old fort. The outline is similar to, though significantly
smaller than, the house as built. Even more perplexing is the
drawing by Joseph Molloy which was engraved by Edward Proctor
for his Belfast Scenery in Thirty Views (1832). The drawing can
be dismissed as simply inaccurate; certainly the scenery, as is
of'ten the case with Molloy, is expressed with romantic exaggeration.
But usually his buildings are drawn with sufficient accuracy to
be readily recognisable, as would surely be desirable where each
plate is individually dedicated to the owner of the house. Yet,
even granted the distant viewpoint, the house as depicted differs
in several important respects from what was built. In particular
there is a portico on the wrong side of the house, and no evidence
that it ever existed. It seems possible that the house was not
complete when Molloy made his drawing, and that he was left to
guess at some of the details.
The house which did finally emerge from its cloak of scaffolding
provided a sharp contrast to the informality of its landscape
setting. Its main facades are clear essays in classical symmetry.
The repetition of equal openings, the severely simple Tuscan portico,
the dominating cornice and parapet, and the firmly regimented
chimney stacks, all combine into a rather stark unity. Even the
gentle bow on the south front, which might have provided an opportunity
for a little light-hearted regency decoration, avoids any hint
of frivolity. External window shutters, though now comparatively
rare, were briefly popular in late-Georgian Ulster. Those at Malone,
likely to be original for they appear in an Edwardian photograph,
give the house a rather colonial flavour. And they add to the
low-key, somewhat defensive character of the house which makes
the interior such a surprise...
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