The Ivies, 41 Station Road, Craigavad, Holywood, County Down, BT18 0BP

The Ivies is a two-storey detached house built around 1870, located on the north side of Station Road in Craigavad. It is rendered in roughcast and painted, with a rectangular plan incorporating two canted bays and single-storey porches to both front and rear elevations. A large two-storey return with conservatory extends to the rear, and a modern attached garage stands to the southeast.

The building is constructed with a pitched natural slate roof featuring exposed rafter tails, blue and black angled ridge tiles, and decorative bargeboard to the gables. Five rendered chimneystacks with moulded caps and paired tall decorative pots rise from the roof. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods run along the overhanging eaves. Windows throughout are predominantly 2/2 timber sliding sash without horns, though some original fenestration has been replaced.

The principal elevation faces southwest and is eight openings wide at first floor level. Twin canted bays occupy the far left and right, with a central gabled porch between them featuring twelve-paned timber-framed windows to each cheek. The entrance door, accessed by a single stone step, is four-panelled with brass furniture. The northwest elevation contains two first-floor windows and one ground-floor window. The rear northeastern elevation has been substantially modified, with a full-height extension to the right and flat-roofed single-storey extension to the centre obscuring much of the original work. A modern plastic conservatory and large modern windows mark further alterations.

The house is set back from Station Road behind squared rendered gate piers with stone caps and modern timber gates, positioned within a leafy road setting near Bangor Road. The garden comprises lawn and shrubs to the rear.

The Ivies represents a suburban-style villa built during the intensive development of the south side of Belfast Lough in the mid-19th century, following the opening of the railway to Bangor in 1865. The current house appears to be a remodelling of an earlier structure that had occupied the site, as shown on first and second edition Ordnance Survey maps. It was first recorded in valuation documents in 1872 as a newly-built vacant house and yard valued at £26. The developer was James McCutcheon, who also built the neighbouring house Mosella.

The first recorded tenant was William Adolphus Ross from 1880, a well-known producer of Belfast mineral waters. Ross founded his firm in 1876 and became chief rival to Cantrell & Cochrane in aerated water production. The company was also celebrated for raspberry vinegar prepared from berries grown at Ross's own gardens at Craigavad. When Ross departed in 1887, David McCutcheon, the property owner, took residence alongside his daughter and her husband John M Johnston, a tea merchant with Belfast premises who had previously lived at Mosella. Subsequent tenants included Thomas Elliott in 1908, Captain Percy Gibson in 1911, and Thomas Sawers, a Scottish fish merchant from High Street Belfast, recorded at the 1911 census. James Harper occupied the house in 1917, followed by Ethel Langlands in 1923, the year a motor house was added to the site and the valuation increased to £48.

The building retains early character to its main elevation, though alterations and fenestration changes to the rear have compromised its original integrity. It survives as an example of mid-to-late 19th-century suburban development along the Lough shore, though it is not among the finest examples of this building type.