Temora, 2 Circular Road West, Holywood, Co Down, BT18 0AT

Temora is a substantial detached house built around 1904 in a loose Arts and Crafts style, set in the Ballycultra area of Holywood. It is two storeys with an attic and has a complex, generally square plan with a number of full-height gabled projections. The house retains a high degree of original fabric and is one of several noteworthy properties that define the character of Circular Road, itself part of the wider development of the area in the latter years of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The roof is covered in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles and fluted brick chimneystacks topped with multiple clay pots, characteristic of the Arts and Crafts style. Decorative bargeboards finish the gables, some with Tudor-style detailing. The eaves project and are fitted with cast-iron ogee rainwater goods. Walling to the ground floor is mainly Flemish-bonded red brick, while the first floor is finished in painted smooth render. Windows are a variety of metal-framed openings — some original, some replacements — generally camber-headed at ground floor level, several with leaded top-lights, and all set on projecting sandstone sills. Canted bay windows feature decorative leaded and stained glass to their upper sections beneath a dentilled ovolo-moulded cornice.

The principal entrance elevation faces northeast. To the left is a two-storey gabled projecting bay with two windows to each floor. In the centre is a taller two-storey-plus-attic bay built entirely in red brick, with a shouldered gable that breaks the wrap-around eaves of the flanking two-storey sections. This central bay has paired windows to the attic, camber-headed windows to both ground and first floors, and a small diminutive window at first-floor level to the left. The right-hand cheek of this central bay is abutted by a two-storey flat-roofed brick addition with a variety of window openings. Further to the right, set back from the rest, is the northwest end of the building, which has no openings. Tucked into the re-entrant angle between the left and centre sections is a single-storey canted porch addition, set at 45 degrees. This contains a four-panelled timber door in a sandstone surround, above which is a decorative Art Deco-style keyblock arrangement, with a narrow leaded window to each cheek of the porch. The main elevation extends to the southeast by way of a single-storey extension that, while sympathetic in character, is of no particular architectural interest.

The southwest garden elevation has three ridge levels. The left bay is two storeys and has a window to each floor set to the right, with a semi-canted bay at ground floor level featuring leaded top-lights. To its right is a narrow two-storey-plus-attic bay with decorative timber framing to the apex and a window to each floor. The right bay projects beneath deep overhanging eaves, has a bowed bay window at ground floor level, and a horizontal window at eaves level on the first floor. A modern kitchen extension abuts to the right. The southeast elevation has been altered and is now fully enclosed by the modern extension. The northwest elevation is a single bay in depth and rendered to the upper floors. It features a fully glazed canted bay window on a plinth wall at ground floor, a stylised Venetian window at first floor, a tripartite mullioned window with a corbelled sill at attic level, and a decorative half-timbered apex.

A large modern L-shaped single-storey extension incorporating a garage was added to the south in 2005. The right section of the southwest elevation has also been altered and extended to accommodate a large modern kitchen.

The house is set in substantial mature grounds on a quiet suburban street characterised by large residences, to the north of the A2 Bangor to Belfast Road. There are large lawned gardens with shrub beds to both the front and rear. The entrance from the road is tarmacadam, flanked by modern red-brick gate piers with sandstone pointed caps. To the northeast of the site is a single-storey dwelling that occupies land formerly belonging to the property, accessed via a shared driveway, with a boundary fence to the east. The entire site is enclosed by mature trees with a hedgerow at the main entrance.

The broader area of Ballycultra began to be developed more intensively during the second half of the 19th century. The Griffith's Valuation map of around 1858 shows that the area — formerly the preserve of grand houses in extensive grounds — had by that time been divided into smaller, more saleable plots, with Circular Road already drawn onto the map. By the third Ordnance Survey edition of 1900–02, several substantial villas had appeared around its circumference, many evidently intended for Belfast's growing mercantile class. The house first appears on the 1900–02 edition and enters the valuation records in 1902, at which point it is occupied by James McErvel, who appears to have been the builder, on a plot of land leased from R. J. Kennedy, a local landowner. The architect is unknown, though the house was built in an Arts and Crafts idiom that was extremely popular in the Belfast hinterland at this date, with its exponents demonstrating varying levels of skill and artistry. The house and outbuildings were valued at £68 5s. By the fourth Ordnance Survey edition of 1919–31, the house is named Temora.

The 1911 census records James McErvel as a seed and implement merchant, widowed, and living at the house with his four adult children, his widowed mother-in-law, his sister-in-law, and a single domestic servant — a cook. Both of his sons were employed as electrical engineers with premises in Wellington Place, Belfast. James McErvel (1844–1928) was born in Gartree, where his father had an extensive farm adjoining Langford Lodge, the residence of the Pakenham family. In the late 1860s he formed a business partnership with his brother under the name T & J McErvel. The company built premises in Victoria Square in 1893, designed by the architect W. J. Gilliland. An 1911 obituary of James's brother Thomas noted that both brothers possessed "a keen business insight, allied with qualities of tact, energy and the strictest integrity" and that the firm had grown to hold the sole agency for many leading makers of agricultural and horticultural implements, with a prominent presence at the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society and other Irish shows. The business also dealt extensively in seeds and in meals and feeding stuffs, which the firm ground themselves. James McErvel lived at Temora until his death in 1928, and the house remains in use as a private dwelling.