The Steeple, Steeple Road, Antrim, Co Antrim, BT41 1BJ

The Steeple is a two-storey rendered house featuring shallow bows flanking the main entrance on its west-facing front. Built in a Classical style, it stands within extensive grounds that include parkland containing an early Christian Irish Round Tower.

Architectural Overview

The house presents a symmetrical west elevation, five windows wide, with a central entrance set within a rectangular porch. The hipped roof is covered in Bangor blue slates laid in regular courses, with wide overhanging eaves supported on a flat, moulded soffit. Moulded cast iron gutters run along the eaves. Two chimneys rise from the roof, both smooth cement rendered with plain projecting cornices. The north stack carries five original octagonal-section earthenware pots, whilst the south stack has three.

The walls are smooth cement rendered, lined and blocked, featuring a projecting plinth at ground level, a moulded string course at first floor level, a plain projecting platband at first floor cill level with slight projections for the cills, and a moulded frieze with dentil cornice beneath the eaves. Windows are rectangular timber sliding sashes, vertically hung. First floor windows are six-over-six panes without horns, set in plain reveals. Ground floor windows are one-over-one with horns, fitted with moulded surrounds and projecting stone cills carried on pairs of moulded brackets.

Main Entrance and Porch

The entrance is approached by four sandstone steps rising between a pair of projecting painted sandstone plinths; the bottom step shows cement repair. The rectangular open porch has a flat roof supported by unfluted Doric columns in a distyle in antis arrangement. The moulded entablature features a dentil cornice returning along the sides, with lead dressings to the projecting cornice and blocking course, all painted white to match the porch walls. The side walls contain recessed panels between Doric pilasters, each housing a rectangular metal fixed light window with a single pane surrounded by narrow margin lights of blue and red tinted glass. These windows have moulded surrounds with projecting moulded cills carried on pairs of small brackets carved with acanthus ornament. A small circular-section cast iron downpipe stands in the angle where the north side of the porch meets the main wall.

The porch floor is laid with modern, appropriate tiles. The inner walls are smooth rendered and painted, with similar window surrounds and brackets as the outer face. The plastered and painted ceiling features a dentil cornice and a central plaster rose of moulded acanthus leaves, with a globular white glass shade for lighting.

The doorway comprises a rectangular timber door, three-panel, glazed and panelled, fitted with modern brass handle and finger plate (appropriate). Large single-pane sidelights flank the door, framed by fluted timber pilasters and moulded entablature, all recessed within an elliptical archway with double roll-moulded surround. A wide single-pane arched fanlight tops the composition. The wooden panels below the sidelights are moulded to simulate brickwork with recessed joints. A circular bronze bell pull is mounted in the extreme right-hand pilaster.

North Elevation

The north elevation is two-storey with a basement to the rear, six windows wide at first floor level. The hipped roof matches the entrance front in its Bangor blue slate covering and wide overhanging eaves with plain soffit. Moulded cast iron guttering is fitted, with a PVC downpipe on the right-hand side. A cast iron soil pipe is also present.

The wall rendering matches the entrance front, with projecting plinth but without string courses, frieze or cornice. Projecting pilasters mark each extremity—the left-hand one plain, the right-hand one with mouldings returning from the front elevation. Ground and first floor windows are sliding sashes as described for the first floor of the entrance front, with plain reveals and plain projecting cills, all six-over-six except the end two on the left, which occupy narrower openings and are four-over-four.

Similar narrow windows at ground floor level are almost entirely obscured by a rectangular projecting block rising from the basement, which has a hipped slated roof. This projecting block has similar rendered walls, moulded cast iron gutter on projecting timber eaves board carried on pairs of small shaped brackets, and a cast iron downpipe on its east side.

The basement features a rectangular doorway and two windows in the main block wall. The doorway has a modern flush timber door with plain rectangular fanlight. The window to the right of the door consists of a pair of coupled rectangular timber sliding sashes, each six-over-six with horns. The window further right is a modern rectangular timber fixed light with side-hung casement and top-hung vent. The east and west sides of the projecting block each contain one six-over-six window without horns, matching those at ground and first floor levels.

The west end of the basement well contains two chambers with segmental brick vaults; the vault to the left is roughly cement rendered. Internal walls are smooth cement rendered, whilst the exterior wall is rendered, lined and blocked. The left-hand chamber has a rectangular timber doorway with wooden frame but no door; the right-hand chamber is open-fronted. The basement well has a concrete surface, and its retaining wall is smooth rendered, lined and blocked.

East Elevation

The east elevation has similar roof, eaves and walling to the north elevation. It comprises two storeys above a basement storey, with a three-quarter-height rectangular projection. Two chimneys stand equidistantly placed on the ridge, rendered to match previous chimneys—one to the south with four original pots, one to the north with five. Moulded cast iron guttering is fitted with cast iron downpipes.

The main wall to the right of the projection contains two windows on each floor: rectangular timber sliding sashes, six-over-six without horns, at ground and first floors, with one similar window to the basement and a pair of similar windows coupled to the right of that. The left-hand ground floor window has iron bars affixed.

The main wall to the left of the projection has one six-over-six ground floor window matching the others, with a later rectangular flush timber door to its left giving access onto a flat concrete slab canopy projecting from the building, fitted with tubular steel K-clamp type railings. Two similar six-over-six windows light the basement storey.

The rear projection has a hipped slated roof, smooth rendered lined and blocked walls, and moulded cast iron gutter on overhanging eaves. Its north side contains one rectangular timber window to the basement, sliding sash one-over-one with horns. The east side has two small rectangular timber windows in the basement, four-pane horizontally pivoted, with plain reveals and projecting cills. The south side features a rectangular timber window to the first floor, sliding sash one-over-one with horns; a pair of rectangular timber coupled windows, sliding sash one-over-one with horns, to the ground floor; and a rectangular flush timber door with plain fanlight to the basement.

South Elevation

The south elevation of the main block is two-storey, symmetrical and five windows wide. The hipped slated roof has overhanging eaves on deep soffit matching the entrance front. Walls are rendered as the entrance front, with moulded string course at first floor level, frieze and dentil cornice, and pilasters at each extremity. Windows on each floor match those on the entrance front, with similar surrounds and brackets to ground floor windows.

Setting and Grounds

The building stands set well back from the main road within its own extensive grounds, positioned on a slight eminence overlooking extensive parkland to the front. This parkland contains groups of mature trees and an Irish Round Tower of the early Christian period. The public park is now separated from the house and its immediate grounds by a concrete post and wire mesh fence.

The immediate grounds contain lawns with shrubs, a tarmac parking area to the front and north side, and a tarmac path along the south side. Several rubble stone one and two-storey outbuildings stand to the east or rear, with slated roofs but many original openings altered; these are now of no special interest or merit. A group of prefabricated single-storey buildings stands to the north-east. To the north of the house stands a single-storey gabled building with basalt rubble walls and corrugated iron roof, formerly a pavilion, now of no architectural interest.

The house is approached from the rear by a wide tarmac driveway separating it from the stone outbuildings. This driveway is bounded on its west side to the rear of the house by a concrete post and tubular steel fence. The rest of the driveway, from the entrance gateway, is bounded on the west side by a rubble stone and roughly coursed stone wall with basalt rock copings, containing sets of small gateways to the garden and parkland.

The gateway in the wall to the garden at the northern end of the driveway comprises a pair of squared greystone piers with a looped iron barred gate and concrete capstones. The gateway to the parkland, further south, comprises a pair of short octagonal stone piers with ogee stone caps, though the gate is now missing. Adjacent to the latter are modern steel-framed and wire mesh gates at an intermediate position on the rear driveway.

At the entrance opening to the rear driveway off the main road stands a single-storey gatelodge with rendered walls, hipped slated roof and red brick chimneys, of no architectural interest or merit.

The front boundary wall to the main road is formed by a basalt rubble wall, re-aligned in the 1980s. Near the southern extremity of this wall is the re-positioned gateway to the front driveway, comprising low rendered curving screen walls with square piers ornamented with a Greek key frieze; no gates remain. Along the front driveway stands a single-storey caretaker's house with rendered walls and hipped slated roofs, built in the 1980s.