Ballywalter Park is home to Lord and Lady Dunleath and has been passed down through their family for 170 years. The Mulholland family, who would later boast of several Lords Dunleath were unique as they were not originally part of the prestigious elite that country house owners usually hailed from. Although not the first owners of the estate, they grew to hold considerable influence over society.

A relative of the Mulhollands, E. Holmes, wrote in 1907 that, “There were several families of the name of Mulholland in Belfast at the end of the 18th century but the one which has risen to a very high degree of worldly distinction and to whom Belfast is probably more indebted than any other for its unexampled progress is that of Thomas Mulholland.”[1]

While the family’s early history is limited, Thomas Mulholland (1756-1820) married Ann Doe in Belfast in 1784 and had 11 children, including four sons: William, Thomas, Andrew and St Clair. The family is believed to be of relatively humble origins. They entered the thriving cotton industry by purchasing a mill around 1815. While Thomas Sr. died in 1820, the business continued its expansion with his sons building a spinning mill near York Street in 1822. However, disaster struck in June 1828 when a fire almost completely destroyed this mill. Time would prove this to be a most fortuitous catastrophe for the family.

The brothers, Thomas, Andrew and St Clair, decided to rebuild the mill for the spinning of flax instead of cotton due to the cotton industry’s growing economic problems. It was with this business that they began to scale the social ladder. The York Street linen mill was opened in 1830 and by 1856 it could be described as one of the largest mills of its kind. Mill-owner Hugh MacCall wrote that the mill’s production “gave a new impulse to the manufacture of linen … Belfast can never forget how much she owes to the house of Mulholland.”[2] He was also impressed by the Mulhollands’ vast profits that, according to him, were far beyond their imagination.

The family was also active in civic affairs. St Clair was a J.P. for County Down and a High Sheriff of County Louth and in 1865 donated money towards a new wing at what would later be known as the Royal Victoria Hospital. His older brother, Andrew was elected Mayor of Belfast for the year 1845. He built Ballywalter Park but is best known for having provided the Ulster Hall with its grand organ in 1862. Andrew’s only son John (1819-95) attended the Royal Academy in Belfast and assumed control of the family interests which grew to include 13,500 acres of land in County Down and 1,000 acres near Cookstown, County Tyrone. John also had political ambitions and was elevated to the peerage in 1892, becoming Baron Dunleath of Ballywalter, by recommendation of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury.

Although Ballywalter Park, the Dunleath family’s base, had a different origin (the Matthews family), most of the Ards estate came from the Blackwood family of Clandeboye, Bangor. The head of that family, later known as the 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, became seriously mortgaged to the 1st Lord Dunleath, whose acquirement of the Dufferin estate, to the north of Ballywalter, was a matter of foreclosure. Through Ballywalter Park, his existing estates, the newly attained Dufferin land and his significant wealth and philanthropy, John Mulholland’s status as an established gentleman was secured. His will in 1895 illustrates the family’s growing affluence. The gross value of personal estate amounted to £583,266 with assets in Ireland adding up to around £65,783. It also discusses his ‘contingent interest in [his] villa in Cannes’.[3] In less than a century the Mulholland family had successfully elevated to the landed class and were playing a significant role in the political and public sphere.

Amy Lyttle, Queen’s University Belfast

[1] (Notebook): Family annals collected and arranged by E. Holmes, 1907, PRONI: D3739/6

[2] (Summary): Dunleath papers, 1706-1972, PRONI: D1167

[3] (Will): Rt. Hon. Baron John Dunleath, 1 Feb 1895, PRONI: LPC/14

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