Glenmakieran, 141 Bangor Road, Cultra, Holywood

Glenmakieran is a rambling two-storey-plus-attic Arts and Crafts house with associated outbuildings, completed in 1908 (though the rainwater hoppers bear the date 1906). It stands in extensive grounds on the south side of the Bangor Road, facing north. The house was built for Robert E. Herdman, a member of the mill-owning family of Sion Mills, who was also a director of the firm of Henry Matier & Co. and a Belfast Harbour Commissioner. The architect is not known, but both the family's connections and stylistic similarities to his other work suggest the English architect W.F. Unsworth may have been responsible, though no documentary evidence has yet been found to confirm this. According to the valuers' office notebook of 1908, the principal accommodation comprised three reception rooms on the ground floor, four bedrooms and two dressing rooms on the first floor, and four attic rooms, with construction costs amounting to £2,850.

The house is an unaltered and particularly fine example of the substantial Edwardian Arts and Crafts house. Asymmetry, sweeping roofs, and eclectic detailing are all characteristic of the style. Small link buildings and yard walls connecting the house to the outbuildings create a composite and picturesque silhouette. Roofs are clad in Rosemary tiles with overhanging eaves and cast iron rainwater goods. Walls are white-painted roughcast, and windows are leaded-light in timber frames with timber sills in most locations, though some feature windows have masonry sills. Where openable, the windows have metal side-hung casements. Windows vary in width and height and are irregularly spaced except where noted below.

THE MAIN HOUSE

The main house is arranged in two wings — a northeast wing and a northwest wing — meeting at an entrance tower at their inside angle, which faces north into the forecourt.

Northeast Wing

The northwest-facing forecourt elevation of the northeast wing has roughcast to the ground floor and vertical tile hanging to the first floor. Reading from left, there is the gable of a single-storey lean-to, followed by two two-light windows and one three-light window just below the eaves of the tile-hanging. To the right, next to the entrance tower, is a three-light window at low level, with three three-light windows set under the eaves above. Higher still, two eyebrow three-light windows appear in the main roof, which is half-hipped. Rainwater and service pipework run up the right-hand side between the second and third first-floor windows. At the far right, the wall meets the entrance tower, which is a canted bay rising two storeys with an octagonal roof running into the main roof. The entrance door is a timber varnished panelled door set in the central face of the bay, with a three-light window to the left-hand cheek. Above the door, a deep gutter forms the edge of a canopy around the bay, hung on ornate wrought iron brackets. At first-floor level, a full-height bay window lights the main staircase; each facet has nine lights in three stages, and the bay has a masonry sill.

The northeast-facing side elevation has, at the left, the side wall of a return facing the garden, with a small lean-to housing an outside toilet and a covered lobby off a small yard; a single-light window lights the first floor above. A tall pebble-dashed chimney rises from the eaves. Forward of this is the yard wall to the left of the northeast wing gable. This contains a single-storey lean-to with a five-light window to the left and a door to the right with a step down to the forecourt; above, a central five-light window sits just under the eaves, with the hipped roof above containing a three-light window centred in a gablet. This yard forms the link to the outbuildings to the east.

The rear elevation, linking the northwest and northeast wings, has a lean-to roof over a timber panelled rear door, with a three-light window to its left. The wall above is tile-hung and contains a six-light window to the rear stairs. In the main roof above and to the left is a triangular tile-hung dormer with a two-light window under a small hip. Forward of this is the gable of the garden return to the northwest wing, which is symmetrical with a ten-light two-stage window at ground floor, an eight-light window (six central lights in two stages with a single light to either side) at first floor, and a single-light window in the apex of the gable. To the right is the gable of a single-storey lean-to running back to the rear wall of the northeast wing, where an eight-light window sits approximately centrally on the ground floor with a door to the right and a three-light window at first-floor level to the right. The southwest cheek of the garden return to the northeast wing is blank except for a four-light window at first floor under the eaves.

Northwest Wing

The southeast-facing gable of the northwest wing has, to the left against the southwest wall, a sunroom and the gable of a single-storey bay. To the right is the main three-storey gable of the northwest wing itself. This gable is symmetrical, with a ten-light two-stage window at both ground and first floor and a five-light window at second floor. Running across the gable at window-head width are bell casts in the roughcast finish. Two downpipes, one at each side, have large moulded rectangular hoppers cast with the date 1906, into which the eaves gutters from either side discharge.

The southwest-facing main elevation of the northwest wing is two-and-a-half storeys high. The roof carries two chimneys: one cruciform stack with five pots on the left-hand gable, and another with six pots just right of centre on the ridge. At the left-hand end is a two-storey gabled rectangular bay containing a square single-storey bay with a hipped roof and a sixteen-light two-stage window at ground level, above which is a ten-light two-stage window with a bell cast at the window head; a small single-light attic window sits in the peak of the gable, also with a bell cast. Next along is a modern plastic sheet infill lean-to between the left-hand and right-hand bays, supported by a timber-framed glazed screen with plain glass and Georgian-glazed double doors. To the right and at a higher level is a rectangular lean-to bay with a semi-octagonal flat-roofed masonry plain-glazed sunroom in front against its southeast wall. The first-floor wall above is tile-hung with two six-light two-stage windows; above these, in the roof, are a three-light and a two-light dormer. The rainwater downpipe drops centrally between the first-floor windows and has been redirected across the right-hand lean-to roof and down.

The northwest gable of the northeast wing is almost three storeys high and is asymmetrical, with the roof on the left-hand side running into the roof of the left-hand bay window. On the left-hand side, covering approximately half the width of the gable, is a two-storey octagonal bay window with a hipped roof; the three full facets have full-width glazing — a nine-light two-stage window at ground floor and a three-light window at first floor. The cheeks of the bay running into the main walls are plain roughcast. The right-hand side of the bay meets a full-height chimney stack that forms a cruciform shape above roof level, with the chimney rising from the gable just left of the apex. Immediately to the right of the chimney at ground-floor level is a two-light window. Stepping up from roughly window-head height on the ground floor to first-floor sill level is a projecting chimney breast with four tiled copings. Against the right-hand wall of the gable is the cheek of the two-storey bay from the southwest elevation; against this is a triangular single-storey bay with a hipped roof and a six-light two-stage window in each facet, with a two-light window above.

The northeast-facing elevation at the entrance tower side forms the southwest side of the forecourt. The roof slope here is the deepest on the house, sweeping down to first-floor eaves level. A chimney sits approximately centrally on the ridge, and the cruciform chimney appears at the gable. There is an eyebrow dormer with an arched three-light window at the centre of the roof slope, and another simple dormer with a three-light window to the right. Walls are roughcast. At the left is the entrance tower as described above; immediately adjacent, a complicated arrangement of pipes runs into a hopper at first-floor level and then to the ground. Next is a two-light window at ground floor with a similar window above, slightly offset; the remainder of the elevation is blank.

THE OUTBUILDINGS

All outbuilding walls are roughcast painted, roofs are Rosemary tiles, and windows match those of the main house though are less tall.

Beginning nearest to the house at the east corner is the boiler room and pump room, a single-storey range whose plain roof continues left over a passageway into the adjacent garage. The northeast elevation has a central chimney in the roof and a gabled end on the right through which a chimney stack rises, with waney-edged timber cladding in the gable apex on either side of the chimney. There are three equally spaced three-light windows. The right-hand end is joined to the main house by the yard wall to the rear of the northeast wing. The southeast elevation faces the passageway and contains the door to the pump room. The southwest elevation is blank. The northwest elevation has central double doors with a glazed screen above and is joined on the right to the main house by the yard wall. The interiors are plain with modern domestic heating equipment throughout; the pump room has a chimney stack on the party wall with the boiler room. Floors are concrete.

Beyond the boiler and pump rooms lies a large courtyard enclosed on the southeast and southwest sides by an L-shaped block comprising the garage and stables respectively. The remaining sides are plain walls with a large gateway in the northeast side.

The garage's northeast elevation has a single timber stable door at the left, with the remainder taken up by two large modern garage doors beneath a tile-hung gable containing two small single-light windows on either side of a timber double loading door giving access to the attic hayloft from the courtyard. The southeast elevation is continuous with the rear elevation of the stables, where the roof is half-hipped and a five-light window sits at high level under the eaves. The southwest elevation has a gabled return at the right projecting forward of the main walls; two three-light windows are symmetrically placed at ground floor, with a further three-light window centrally positioned in the gable above. The northwest elevation has a door to the passageway and a two-light window at the right-hand corner.

The garage interior is plain and undivided, with windows to the rear wall. The ceiling is joisted with timber flooring above forming the hayloft; the floor is concrete. Within the garage, a strong timber door with an iron grille to the top half in a tongue-and-groove boarded timber screen divides two original loose box stalls. The left-hand stall retains a wall-hung iron hay rack and drinking trough in a timber frame; the right-hand stall has double feed troughs at floor level. Floors are ribbed concrete. Also in the right-hand stall, a timber ladder gives access to a landing leading to the attic hayloft above the garage, which is plain with a timber floor and lit as described above.

The stables have roughcast walls and a Rosemary-tiled roof hipped to the northeast end, falling below storey height to the exterior of the yard and running into the higher garage block roof at the other end. The northwest elevation reads from left: a small one-over-one window with plain glass; two broad timber stable doors; another small matching window; and a two-light window beside a tongue-and-groove boarded door to the smaller tack room. The northeast elevation is blank with the hipped roof sweeping down to low level. The southeast elevation is blank with low-level eaves. The stables interior comprises loose boxes divided by a partition wall, otherwise plain. The tack room interior is plain.

SETTING AND HISTORY

The grounds survive to their original extent. Though currently neglected and overgrown, the broad intentions of the original design remain perceptible.

The property appears in early sources under the name Merronhurst, though it is not recorded as such in the valuations or contemporary directories. The name Glenmakieran does not appear in the early records either, though the building is marked by this name on the six-inch Ordnance Survey map produced sometime between 1919 and 1931. At some point between 1929 and 1936, the house was acquired by a John Higginson, with a Margaret Higginson recorded as occupant in the valuations between 1950 and 1958. After this, the property passed into the joint ownership of an E. Donald and an R. Shearer. Eric Cowan acquired the building in 1966 and appears to have remained in occupation until around 1993. Since that time the house has changed hands at least twice but has not been occupied.

The gate lodge, not yet surveyed at the time of listing, is considered of some importance to the overall composition. It is believed to have been built around 1928 and first appears in the post-1935 valuations, recorded as Glenmakieran Lodge.