30 Greenmount Road, Muckamore, Antrim, BT41 4PX

30 Greenmount Road, Muckamore, is an early 20th century house of distinctive form and style. Built around 1925 as a cottage for the farm foreman at Greenmount Agricultural College, it was designed under the direction of Roland Ingleby Smith, chief architect to the Government of Northern Ireland, with contractors T. McKee and Sons of Belfast. The building remains in use as a staff residence for the College.

The house is a 1½ and 2-storey structure of asymmetrical plan built in basalt rubble with sandstone dressings and steep-pitched hipped roofs. The main entrance faces south. The south elevation displays a roof of Westmorland green slates in diminishing courses with flat soffits to overhanging eaves finished with a timber eaves board. A raised sandstone platband marks the first floor cill level. A central chimney of roughly coursed basalt rubble with tooled edges to corners supports a plain block cornice. The elevation features two coupled rectangular timber 6-pane side-hung casements to the first floor with soffit to the eaves head, and one similar window to the ground floor with a timber drip board, recessed cill, and flat arch to the head. All windows in the house are modern replacements. The entrance is a rectangular timber stained and varnished glazed and panelled door recessed in plain reveals with an angled top to the flat arched head, set on a concrete doorstep. Current rainwater goods are PVC.

Extending to the right-hand side and set well back from the main wall is a lower 1½ storey block with most of the ground floor behind a curved screen wall to a small yard. The screen wall is built of similar basalt to the main house with sandstone block coping in line with stringcourse. The yard wall to the west contains a semi-elliptical archway with a rectangular ledged and braced timber door. The yard surface is concrete with basalt rubble walls.

The south elevation of the house within the yard is constructed of basalt rubble with a sandstone stringcourse, featuring four square ventilation openings at the top of the wall, presumably serving an original drying room in the loft above. Two recessed doorways open from here: a rectangular ledged timber door to the right in a flat basalt arch, and a modern rectangular flush timber glazed door to the left set in a tongued and grooved sheeted screen within a segmental headed basalt flat arch.

The west elevation follows the pattern of the entrance front in its roof, walling, and rainwater goods. It contains one window to each floor: a first floor double casement matching those to the entrance front, and a ground floor small rectangular timber 4-pane top-hung window with timber drip board in a flat arch.

The north elevation is similar to the west, with the addition of a PVC soil pipe. It has two windows to each floor of the double casement type. The lower 1½ storey block projects to the left-hand side, featuring matching roof, rainwater goods, and walling, with four small square ventilation openings to the top of the wall and one recessed ground floor window with coupled rectangular timber 4-pane casements whose head is formed by a projecting sandstone stringcourse. A modern wooden fence partly screens an oil tank in the gravelled area between the blocks.

The east elevation shows the main 2-storey block with hipped roof and the lower 1½ storey block projecting forward centrally. The 1½ storey block features one centrally positioned window of rectangular timber coupled 4-pane casements, deeply recessed with rusticated sandstone block dressings to reveals, sandstone cill, and rusticated flat arched sandstone head extending to each side to form a stringcourse. Below the cill is a shallow recessed panel of basalt stonework with tooled edges to reveals but rough finish to the ledge below. A modern flush rooflight sits in the roof above, and a television aerial is mounted on the chimney.

The building, though it has undergone some inappropriate alterations, still enjoys a pleasant rural setting on a corner site at an entrance to the agricultural college. A similar but not identical house stands directly opposite, built at the same time as part of an overall architectural composition, and together with other buildings elsewhere in the grounds in similar materials and architectural idiom designed by the same architect, it forms part of an interesting group.

The site is approached by a short pedestrian path and a vehicular driveway off the entrance road. A tarmac path crosses the main entrance with a tarmac area to the west; lawns extend to the rear and east with well kept flower beds. The front and east boundary is formed by a black stained timber fence containing an original wrought iron pedestrian gate of geometrical design on iron posts and a pair of modern iron vehicular gates on steel posts to the driveway.