Hillview, 15 Rushvale Road, Ballyclare, Co.Antrim, BT39 9LY

Hillview is a detached, symmetrical three-bay two-storey vernacular house built around 1820, located to the west of Rushvale Road in Ballyclare. It is a well-preserved example of early 19th-century vernacular architecture, with plan form and original features largely intact.

The house is rectangular on plan with single-storey pitched roof returns to each gable. The roof is pitched natural slate with blue and black clay ridge tiles, plain timber bargeboards supported on exposed rafter ends, and rendered corbelled gable chimneystacks with terracotta pots. Half-round cast-iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout. The walls are roughcast rendered.

The principal elevation faces north and features three openings to each floor arranged symmetrically about a central gabled entrance porch. The entrance porch contains a modern hardwood entrance door with windows to each side. Windows throughout the main house are square-headed 1/1 timber sliding sashes with painted masonry cills. The rear elevation contains three windows at each floor, with two ground-floor windows on the right side being timber casements rather than sashes.

The left gable is abutted by a single-storey outbuilding with pitched roof detailed as the main house, with an exposed blank section. The right gable is abutted by a single-storey outbuilding with pitched corrugated metal roof and similarly blank exposed wall section. The north elevation of the left gable return has a single timber-sheeted door to the right and a 6/6 timber sliding sash window to the east gable; the south (rear) elevation is blank. The north elevation of the right gable return contains a central timber-sheeted door with timber casements to each side. A further outbuilding is similarly detailed with pitched corrugated metal roof and timber double doors to the north.

The setting includes a garden to the south bounded along Rushvale Road by painted dry stone walling. The yard to the north is open to the roadside. A perpendicular multi-bay two-storey outbuilding stands to the west of the yard, roughcast rendered with timber fenestration intact and pitched natural slate roof.

The building appears in its current form on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832. It does not feature in the Townland Valuation of 1836, but Griffith's Valuation of 1859 records the property as a house, office and land, occupied by James Mahon and valued at £1 6 shillings.