Rollo House, 6 High Street, Holywood, Co Down, BT18 9AZ

Rollo House is a symmetrical three-bay, three-storey terraced Georgian townhouse built around 1790, located on the south side of the High Street in Holywood town centre, County Down. It is one of a pair of houses of Georgian proportions with some Victorian detailing, and the two may well have been built together. The building is a relatively rare surviving example of late 18th century housing in Holywood, illustrating the expansion of the town centre during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The listing extends to the house itself, the boundary wall, railings, and gate.

Architecturally, the building is rectangular on plan with a full-height projecting stairwell to the rear. The roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles and rendered chimneystacks. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods are fitted throughout. External walls are finished in painted smooth render.

The windows are 6/6 timber-framed sliding sashes set in moulded surrounds with keystones and corbelled sills. The second-floor windows are diminutive and lack keystones.

The principal elevation faces north and is symmetrically arranged across three bays. At ground-floor level the central bay features a curved projecting portico with a segmental-headed opening framed by Doric pilasters, surmounted by a decorative cast-iron railing. The front door is a six-panelled timber door with a transom light and brass door furniture. To the east, the elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The south rear elevation has a single window to each floor on either side of a round stairwell tower; the tower itself has two windows to the rear, with a window to each floor on its right-hand side and a modern fire exit to the left. The west elevation is abutted to first-floor level by the adjoining building.

The building is set back from the High Street behind a small paved front garden enclosed by a painted masonry wall with piers and decorative cast-iron railings. A communal tarmacadam car park lies to the rear.

The building has been fully refurbished internally in recent years for use as a private music school, resulting in significant loss of historic fabric and some alteration to the original floor plan.

The historical record of the house is well documented. A map of Cultra dated 1775 does not show the houses, as development in Holywood had not yet extended into the Ballykeel townland at that time. By 1819, however, a map shows a terrace in the location of the present house. Local historian Tony Merrick records that this house and its neighbour were the venue of the Holywood "squeezes" — fashionable evening social gatherings held in the 1790s and 1800s, sometimes continuing through the night. The house appears in the Townland Valuation of 1828–40 as one of three dwellings owned by John Rowley, with a valuation of £13 14s. By the time of Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, ownership had passed to Elizabeth Pollock and the valuation had risen considerably to £23, possibly indicating remodelling at that time. A valuation town plan dating from around 1860–66 shows the house had been extended to the rear and that the front porch had been added. The tenant at this period was William Shepherd, who ran the premises as a school — "Mr W Shepherd's English, Mercantile and Classical Academy" — as recorded in the Belfast and Ulster Street Directory of 1861.

The valuation fell to £20 in 1884 and to £17 in 1889, a reduction that may reflect Holywood's declining desirability as a residential address towards the end of the 19th century. A succession of tenants occupied the house during this period: Thomas O'Brien in 1863, Hugh Stewart (undated, formerly the local Postmaster, the post office having been situated at Number Ten High Street), Samuel McClure in 1880, Thomas Wormald in 1887, and William D. Donnan MD from 1900. The 1901 census records William Dunlop Donnan, a physician and surgeon, living there with his sister and a servant across eleven occupied rooms; the house was designated first class in the census on account of its size and construction. Donnan was born in Ceylon, where his family were then resident, and was the eldest son of William Donnan, a wholesale spirit merchant. He was also the elder brother of Frederick George Donnan, the internationally celebrated physical chemist best known for his theory of membrane equilibrium — a theory with important applications in the technologies of leather and gelatin, and particularly in understanding how ions and molecules are transported within living cells and between cells and their environment. The Donnan family also resided at properties in Riverston Terrace and Ardmore Terrace in Holywood.

Subsequent tenants included James Gilliland in 1907 and George E. Richards in 1908. By 1911, William Martin Downing — who had previously occupied the adjoining house — was listed as occupier. Downing had originally been employed as a master bookbinder but by this period was working as a wholesale stationer, living with his wife and son, a furniture salesman. His change of profession may reflect the wider shift in the book trade during this era, as books came to be sold ready-bound rather than left for private purchasers or booksellers to bind, a consequence of increasing mechanisation and mass production. By 1921 the house had been purchased for £350 and Thomas Frizelle, a gas works engineer and manager, was in residence. From 1925, the Holywood Gas Company is listed as the immediate lessor. The gasworks, a privately owned coal-fired facility on the Kinnegar, had opened in 1860 and continued in operation until the 1980s, supplying gas for heating, lighting, and cooking. The building is known today as Rollo House and is in use as a music school.