4 Tudor Park, Holywood, Co Down, BT19 0NX

A three-storey semi-detached stucco house in Tudor-Revival style, built around 1850 and forming one of three pairs of semi-detached houses known collectively as Tudor Park. The house was built by Henry Murney, a prosperous tobacco merchant with a business in High Street, Belfast. It is located in secluded grounds off Tudor Oaks Road to the east of Holywood, on an elevated site with views towards Belfast Lough.

The building is U-shaped on plan, with an abbreviated gabled return extending from a rectangular front block. A conservatory and double-height lean-to extend to the rear, with a further conservatory extending to the west elevation. The pitched natural slate roof has blue and black angled ridge tiles, raised stone skews and kneelers. Tall stone chimneystacks with chamfered stalks to suggest individual flues are topped with ovolo-moulded heavy plinths. Rear chimneys are rendered with chamfered stalks, simpler plinths and tall terracotta pots. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods are fitted on drive-in brackets.

The walling is smooth rendered stucco with quoins over a chamfered plinth. Windows are various timber-framed sliding sash designs in simple chamfered surrounds with chamfered sills. Dormer windows are 1 over 1 sliding sash. The principal elevation faces southwest and comprises a two-storey entrance bay offset to the left of centre, flanked by two gabled bays each one window wide, with the rightmost bay being narrower and two windows wide. The porch contains a bolection-moulded six-panel door with brass furniture and receives light from the west and north. The northwest elevation comprises a central projecting gabled bay with single window openings flanking it; the left bay contains a replacement window dating from 1941. The northeast elevation is abutted by the adjoining semi-detached house. The southeast elevation is abutted by a three-storey slightly recessed rear wing creating the U-shaped plan, with an exposed gable featuring a diminutive 2 over 2 sash window to the second floor. This wing comprises a half-panelled door with transom light at first floor, abutted by a cast-iron railed balcony over the double-height lean-to with raised stone skews, which is in turn abutted at ground floor by a timber conservatory.

The house is set on an elevated site in mature grounds, lawned to the front and accessed via a gravel drive from Tudor Oaks Road. The site, once extending to the Bangor Road below, is surrounded by mature boundary trees and hedges. Much of the building's original architectural detailing and features survive, making it a fine, well-preserved example of the type Belfast's wealthy merchants were constructing in the mid-19th century.

The expansion of this area of Holywood occurred in the 1830s and 1840s when well-to-do businessmen and merchants began to settle in what became known as High Holywood, an area bounded by Bangor Road, Victoria Road and Croft Road. This higher ground was attractive for its scope to site substantial villas in four or five acres of prime woodland, landscaped to resemble small country estates, and for its commanding views of Belfast Lough and the County Antrim hills without excessive exposure. The three pairs of semi-detached houses comprising Tudor Park are first shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1858, together with a gate lodge on the Bangor Road entrance to the demesne. The gate lodge and castellated gates were subsequently lost when a private housing estate was built in the grounds in the 1970s.

The house is listed in Griffith's Valuation (1856-64) as occupied by Robert Megaw and leased from Henry Murney, valued at £62. Numerous changes of occupier in ensuing years indicate the house was probably let. Occupiers included Martin Jaffe (dates uncertain), John R Sefton (1879), Henry Murney, M.D., son of the original builder (1887), Thomas Maguire (1900), a solicitor listed in the Ulster Towns Directory of 1910 who later lived in the adjoining house, Ann Ormsby (1909) and Thomas N Wilson (1927). The valuation dropped by degrees to £45 by 1891, perhaps indicating disrepair. In 1909 a very small greenhouse was added to the buildings, though this did not merit a rise in valuation. Frederick Hoey became the immediate lessor by 1909, following the death of his uncle Henry Murney in 1907.

Martin Jaffe was the son of Daniel Joseph Jaffe, founder of Belfast's Jewish synagogue in 1871, and brother of Otto Jaffe, who later became Lord Mayor of Belfast. Martin ran the Belfast branch of his father's business. The first Jewish service to be held in Ulster in the nineteenth century took place in 1864 in Martin Jaffe's Holywood home. Although the exact date of Jaffe's move to Tudor Park is uncertain, it appears to have occurred between 1863 and 1867, and this may therefore be the house where the service was held.

The building was subject to extensive and expensive co-ordinated repairs between 1989 and 1992. Although the house's setting has been compromised by modern development, Tudor Park forms a notable group and is representative of the expansion of Holywood in the first half of the nineteenth century.