Merville House, Merville Garden Village, Shore Road, Whitehouse, Co Antrim, BT37 9TH

Merville House is an asymmetrical two-storey stucco house built around 1840 as a frontal addition to an early 18th-century manor house. It was designed by architect Thomas Jackson, who also designed St Malachy's Church in Belfast and the neighbouring Longwood gate lodge. The original early 18th-century house, a five-bay gentleman's residence of rubble stone construction, was demolished in 2005. The current house was remodelled in the late 19th century following a fire around 1890, and underwent extensive sympathetic restoration around 2000–2005.

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting left bay, facing east. It comprises four bays across the principal elevation. The roof is hipped with natural slate, and features tall painted rendered chimneys with corbelled caps. Concealed gutters with cast-iron square-section downpipes serve the roof. The walling is painted render over a projecting plinth; the corners of the principal elevation and projecting bay are articulated by pilaster strips. A cavetto-moulded sill course marks the first-floor level, and a moulded cornice with leaded coping forms the parapet.

Windows throughout are 1/1 replacement timber sashes with moulded stucco architraves to the principal elevation only; ground-floor windows have stepped rendered sills. The left bay projects and contains two windows to each floor. Bay two is abutted by a substantial single-storey flat-roofed porch at ground level, with a single window above. Bay three projects slightly and features a window with narrow detached sidelights to each floor. Bay four contains two windows to each floor. The porch comprises a pedestal course supporting pilasters with decorative capitals, a plain entablature, and a leaded parapet. The principal entrance at the porch centre has a double-leaf two-panel door with an elongated top panel and small bolection-moulded bottom panel, with large brass knobs set between the panels. Flanking sidelights have narrow sashes, with a single window to each cheek.

The south elevation features a full-height canted bay with a window to each cheek separated by pilasters. Ground-floor pilasters have simple moulded capitals surmounted by a dentil cornice; first-floor pilasters have decorative capitals surmounted by a moulded cornice. The rear elevation is completely abutted by a contemporary office-block extension. The north elevation has two windows to each floor.

The house is set at the east end of Merville Garden Village, with flats overlooking the building on all sides except the east. A gravel forecourt fronts the building, with a modern nursing home positioned on what remains of a former terraced garden that historically overlooked Belfast Lough.

The property was originally built for Major John Rowan by architect Thomas Jackson. Later residents included Sir Edward Coey, former mayor of Belfast, and the Robinson family of the bacon-curing empire. During the Second World War the house and grounds were requisitioned for military use. Subsequently they were sold for development to Ulster Garden Villages Ltd, and Merville Garden Village was constructed around the house. The building was retained as a community centre for residents and now houses the Merville Society for Arts, Culture and Heritage, serving as both a community facility and housing a commercial annex.

An 1800 sale notice in the Belfast News Letter describes an earlier house on the site built in 1795, comprising a drawing-room, parlour, kitchen, seven bedrooms, two dressing rooms, back stairs, stabled accommodation for six horses, two coach houses, hay-lofts, piggery, poultry yard, and a 1½-acre walled garden. The property was then held on lease from the Marquis of Donegal for 31 years and three lives. The 1857 Ordnance Survey map shows the current house without the south bay and with a bowed bay to the principal elevation, with two substantial returns to the rear and extensive outbuildings. Formally planted gardens occupied the rear, with a central avenue running through them which now remains as the spine of Merville Garden Village. Griffiths Valuation of 1857 valued the buildings at £115.

Several remnants of the historic demesne were retained and incorporated into the estate layout, including the 18th-century walled garden, now used as allotments. The settlement was designated a Conservation Area in 1995. By 2000 Merville House had fallen into decay; in 2002 Merville House Limited was formed to secure the building's refurbishment and continued existence as an integral part of the garden village.