The Villa, Holywell Hospital, 60 Steeple Road, Antrim, Co Antrim, BT41 2RJ

The Villa at Holywell Hospital is an early 20th century building constructed in 1906-7 to provide extra ward accommodation for the County Antrim Lunatic Asylum. It has since lost a number of its original features.

The building is a two-storey structure with hipped roofs and roughcast rendered walls. The main entrance faces south, and the south elevation is symmetrical, featuring a recessed central block five windows wide flanked by projecting end blocks two windows wide. The roofs are laid with Bangor blue slates in regular courses, with terracotta ridge tiles to the hips. Red brick chimneys with red pots are topped with oversailing eaves; a moulded cast iron gutter runs round with cast iron hoppers and downpipes.

The walls are of roughcast render on a painted brick plinth with painted brick moulding. A moulded brick stringcourse runs at first floor level, with a stepped brick cornice above, all painted. The windows are rectangular aluminium replacement fixed lights with narrow horizontal opening vents, set in painted moulded brick surrounds with projecting cills.

The central doorway is elliptically arched within a continuous painted moulded brick surround, containing a pair of original glazed and panelled doors with glazed and panelled sidelights and a plain arched fanlight. The ground floor of the recessed central block is enclosed by an open fronted verandah, although a glazed lean-to roof is now missing from the left-hand half of the elevation. The verandah is floored with patterned encaustic tiles; its front is formed by an arcade of cast iron circular columns inscribed 'David King and Sons, Glasgow', with curvilinear spandrels to the top. Scrolling wrought iron railings run between the columns. A PVC gutter and downpipe serve the verandah.

The east and west elevations are four windows wide, of similar character to the entrance front. A modern flush timber door to the east elevation is approached by a modern concrete ramp with tubular steel railings. The rear elevation is similar to the other elevations except for small projecting single storey hipped roof return blocks at each side of a central single storey flat-roofed projection. Large modern steel fire escape stairways are located at the rear of the end blocks.

The building stands to the south-east of the main hospital building within the hospital grounds, enjoying a distant view over the countryside to the south and visible from the main driveway. Tarmac paths flank each side with a tarmac area to the front; grassy lawns extend beyond the paths.

Originally, the building contained dayrooms on the ground floor and dormitories upstairs, providing accommodation for 75 male patients of the chronic and working class. It was changed from a ward to the Occupational Therapy Department in 1990.