Tudor House, 6 Tudor Park, Holywood, Co Down, BT18 0NX

Tudor House is a fine two-storey-with-attic, multi-bay semi-detached house finished in stucco in the Tudor Revival style, built in 1848–49 by Henry Murney, a tobacco merchant with a business in High Street, Belfast, and substantially remodelled following fire damage by the architects Boyd and Batt in 1868. It sits in secluded grounds off Tudor Oaks Road to the east of Holywood, on an elevated site looking out towards Belfast Lough.

The building is rectangular on plan, with a series of gabled wings extending from the main rectangular block. The roof is pitched natural slate with blue-black angled ridge tiles, raised stone skews and kneelers, and tall clustered stone chimneystacks arranged in groups of three and four, each with a heavy ovolo-moulded plinth. Rainwater goods are cast-iron ogee on drive-in brackets. External walling is smooth rendered stucco over a chamfered plinth, with quoins at the corners.

Windows throughout are timber-framed sliding sashes set in simple chamfered surrounds with chamfered sills. Hood moulds are used to the second floor and label moulds to the ground floor windows, except where noted otherwise.

The principal entrance elevation faces northeast. The main rectangular block to the north presents a three-storey entrance bay flanked by two gabled wings, each one opening wide, with a canted bay to the ground floor; the right-hand bay has a parapet. The gabled porch has a pinnacle and cartouche detail, with additional diminutive cartouche detailing to its exposed section. It contains a four-and-a-half-panelled pointed arch timber door set in a bead-moulded recessed surround, accessed by a stone step. The exposed section to the north of the porch has a slender window.

To the south of the main block are three gabled wings. The right-hand wing contains a two-storey entrance bay with a panelled timber entrance door. The two wings to the left have multi-pane openings to the ground and first floors — both with label moulds and stops — and a diminutive window to the second floor. At the far left there is a garden wall with a panelled timber door in the exposed section to the north.

The exposed section of the gable to the main block has a stained glass window at first floor level. The southeast elevation of the main block is two windows wide, with a stained glass window to the left at first floor and a dormer window with a decorative bargeboard to the right. The south elevation of the rear wing is blank at first floor level, with the ground floor concealed by the garden wall. The southwest elevation abuts the adjoining building. The northwest elevation is gabled and a single window wide, with a canted bay to the ground floor containing four openings.

On the staircase landing inside Tudor House there is a stained glass window inscribed "Tudor House. H.M. 1848", which dates the original construction. The building was severely damaged by fire and restored by the architects Boyd and Batt; the Irish Builder of 1 November 1868 announced the restoration as "nearly finished", and the rateable valuation subsequently rose from £71 to £86 by 1870. Extensive, expensive and co-ordinated repairs were also carried out between 1989 and 1992.

Tudor House forms one of a pair of semi-detached houses, and together with two further pairs — six houses in total — makes up the group historically known as Tudor Park, all built by Henry Murney. The group is first shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1858, at which time a gate lodge on the Bangor Road entrance to the demesne is also recorded. Both the gate lodge and the castellated gates were lost when a private housing estate was built within the grounds during the 1970s. The architect of the original construction has been attributed, somewhat uncertainly, to Millar.

The house is listed in Griffith's Valuation (1856–64) as occupied by Daniel Currell and leased from Henry Murney, with a valuation of £71. Daniel Currell, whose residence is given as Holywood, is listed in the Belfast and Province of Ulster Street Directory for 1861 as a linen and cotton manufacturer with premises in Linenhall Street, Belfast. Following the restoration of 1868, the valuation rose to £86 by 1870 but declined gradually thereafter, falling to £54 by 1891. The house passed through numerous occupants, including J. K. Vallely (1884), W. H. Lyons (1900), Thomas Orr (1913), Richard Birch (1927), and Frederick Hoey (1929). William Henry Holmes Lyons of Old Park, Belfast — born 1843, educated at Harrow, Grand Master of the County Antrim Orangemen, Justice of the Peace for County Antrim, High Sheriff in 1904, and Deputy Lieutenant for the City of Belfast — had a daughter, Lily Eileen, born at Tudor House in 1894. Frederick Hoey became immediate lessor of both houses in 1907, following the deaths of Henry Murney junior and his sister Isabella Murney in a fire; probate from their wills was granted to Charles Hoey, solicitor, and Frederick Hoey, merchant, who was a nephew of the Murneys.

The area in which Tudor House stands — the triangle of land bounded by Bangor Road, Victoria Road, and Croft Road — began to attract prosperous businessmen and merchants from the 1830s and 1840s onwards. As the local historian Merrick observed, this higher ground was favoured because it lay outside the town, offering the scope to set each villa in four or five acres of prime woodland that could be landscaped to resemble a small country estate, while commanding unrivalled views of Belfast Lough and the County Antrim hills without being overly exposed. The area became unofficially known as "High Holywood".

The house sits within a mature, elevated site that once extended to the Bangor Road below, surrounded by mature boundary trees and hedgerow. The front is lawned and approached by a gravel drive from Tudor Oaks Road. Although the wider setting has been compromised by modern development, Tudor House remains a well-preserved example of the type of villa that Belfast's wealthy merchants were building in the mid-19th century, and it retains much of its original architectural character and detailing.