125 Belfast Road, Templepatrick, Co. Antrim, BT41 2AZ

A detached three-bay two-storey house at 125 Belfast Road, Templepatrick, built circa 1870 and rated Grade B1 for architectural and local historical interest.

The house is L-shaped in plan, facing north, and set back from Belfast Road by a short yard behind a rendered dwarf wall. It is constructed of rendered blockwork, painted, with a natural slate pitched roof. The roof is topped with rendered blocked chimneystacks to the gable ridges, each carrying two octagonal terracotta beaded chimneypots. The walling features block-marked rendering with moulded corbelled-out eaves. Windows throughout are square-headed bipartite painted timber casements with hexagonal glazing, side-hung, painted reveals and masonry sills. Caned windows of this type were popular in the early twentieth century. The north-facing elevation contains a central square-headed painted timber and glazed door. The east gable has an off-centre window serving a mezzanine and a central window in a four-centred arched recessed opening at the gable apex. The return features an off-centre canted bay at ground floor level. The south elevation, now partially obscured, originally had single windows to both floors. The west gable is similar to the east but without the mezzanine window and is abutted by a single-storey pitched garage. Rainwater goods are cast iron throughout.

The house is a good example of early nineteenth-century domestic architecture with picturesque detailing, including decorative chimneystacks, ornate fenestration and the eye-catching Tudor-arched recesses to the gable apexes. It retains its original detailing and historic character.

A house appears on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map. Griffith's Valuation records a "Herd's house and land" occupied by Thomas Giffin, leased from William Chaine and valued at £4 10 shillings. The building remained substantially unchanged through the 1850s and early 1900s Ordnance Survey editions. By the 1921 map, an addition to the southeast was evident, likely dating to 1909 as claimed by a later homeowner to Ballymena Divisional Planning Office. A photograph from 1977 shows the house painted pink, with a now-demolished three-bay single-storey house standing to its west. That adjacent property had a pitched roof, brick chimneystacks, pebble-dashed walling and similar windows; its site is now a concrete lot. The current owner states the house was home to the manager of a nearby stables and granary.

A modern canted conservatory abuts the south elevation of the return, and a flat-roofed kitchen extension abuts the west elevation of the conservatory. Both additions are of no architectural interest. The setting includes a paved drive to the right accessing the garage, a second drive to the left accessing the rear yard and screened by a painted wrought-iron hinged gate. A detached shed stands to the left of the second drive. The rear yard contains lawns and topiary hedgerows, enclosed to the rear by mature trees.