Glenbank House, 118 Princetown Road, Bangor, County Down, BT20 3TG

Glenbank House is a large two-storey, multi-bay Victorian house built around 1890 to designs by the architects Young & Mackenzie. It stands in the Bangor West area of County Down, on the promontory at Wilson's Point, immediately adjacent to the listed building Seacourt, with panoramic views overlooking Belfast Lough towards Bangor Esplanade. The house sits within the Bangor West Area of Townscape Character and forms part of a wider group of substantial detached and semi-detached houses developed in this fashionable part of Bangor from around 1880 onwards.

The building is principally rectangular in plan, with two large wings projecting to the rear, along with further additions and abutments. The roof is natural slate, pitched and hipped, with leaded ridge and hips, overhanging timber moulded eaves with panelled soffits, and cast-iron ogee moulded gutters with circular downpipes. The gable ends carry decorative fretted bargeboards with sexfoil and pentafoil detailing, projecting purlins, and brackets. The red brick chimneystacks are laid in stretcher bond with cement-rendered bases and are surmounted by a reconstituted stone cornice with circular terracotta pots.

The external walls are red brick in Flemish bond, with cement-panelled long-and-short quoins, a cement plinth, and reconstituted moulded cills and string course. Windows are 1/1 timber sliding sashes with horns, set within reconstituted stone moulded surrounds with a central keyblock; the ground floor has a continuous cill course, while the first floor cills are supported on console brackets. The front door is Palladian in style, embraced by a single-storey portico partially in antis. The door itself is a timber replacement with an arched fixed light over, flanked by a pair of arched sidelights, set within pilaster surrounds rising to a dentilled cornice and moulded head with a corbelled keystone. Sandstone Ionic columns flank the steps leading up into the portico.

The principal elevation faces north-east and is symmetrically arranged, with a central bay surmounted by a gablet, flanked by two slightly projecting gabled bays. The central bay has paired ground floor windows with matching diminished windows above. The side bays each feature two-storey canted bays finished in smooth cement render, with matching surround details rising to a cornice corbel course and hipped roof, all set beneath the gable bargeboards.

The south-east elevation is two storeys, two bays, asymmetrically arranged, and is entirely abutted at ground floor level by a flat-roofed single-storey addition with a balustraded parapet running the full width of the facade. At first floor, the left bay has a slightly projecting gable with paired arched windows, and there is a single square-headed window to the right. The ground-floor abutment includes the former principal entrance behind a portico to the left, a single window to the right, and three closely positioned windows to the curved easternmost corner. The southwest face of the abutment has an arched window to the left and a square-headed opening to the portico on the right.

The rear, south-west elevation is abutted by two returns and is partially enclosed by a walled yard with outbuildings, some of which have been partially incorporated into the house. The exposed central section has a casement window at ground floor with an arched window above. The right return has a hipped south-west face; it is abutted to the left by a single-storey lean-to outbuilding and has two windows to the right, surmounted by a window to the right and a broad arched window to the far left. Its north-west face has a door to the right and a window to the left on each floor. The left gabled return is abutted to the south-west by a two-storey extension added around 1920; the exposed section has a window on the right at each floor, and the projecting hipped south-east face has three windows on each floor. This extension is detailed in the same manner as the main block, with a moulded string course between floors. Its gabled south-west face has two windows on each floor; the south-east face has two windows at first floor with the ground floor obscured; the north-west face is abutted entirely by a further extension also added around 1920.

The north-west elevation is asymmetrical and features a two-storey segmental bow bay on the left, lit by three windows at each floor, with three further ground and first floor windows to the right, non-uniformly arranged. A modern single-storey hipped porch is located at the re-entrant angle of the projecting extension, with a modern door and surround to the north-west face and a single window to the north-east. A two-storey extension to the far right has a notable rounded ground floor corner on the right, with the first floor supported on a bracket set at 45 degrees. This extension has two windows to the first floor and one to the ground floor on the north-west face, a window on the right at ground floor, and a casement window at the left at first floor on the north-east face, with two windows on each floor on the south-west face.

The interior has been subdivided into six apartments, resulting in alteration of the internal layout and some loss of detailing, although the surviving internal fabric is of very high quality and displays great craftsmanship.

The grounds are large, though much of the land to the front of the house has been given over to modern development, including a bungalow erected around 1990. To the rear of the site is a tennis court and small pavilion, installed around 1930. To the north-west stands a row of six garages, five of which have retained their original timber doors. Also to the rear, near the present entrance, is a former chauffeur's house, now under separate ownership, and a formal arched entrance dated 1890, no longer in use. The current entrance is marked by robust stucco moulded piers surmounted with finials. A small patio adjoins the front lawn, and a large rendered brick wall stands to the south-east of the site, adjacent to Marine Gardens.

Historically, Glenbank is first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901, though it first appears in valuation records in 1890 and was valued at £127 in 1891. The house was built for Emily Jane Connor, an unmarried daughter of Foster Connor, a linen manufacturer who had built the neighbouring mansion Seacourt before his death in 1881. At the time Glenbank was constructed, Seacourt was occupied by Foster Connor's son, Charles C. Connor. Emily Connor, known locally as "Bangor's Lady Bountiful", was active in her community: she opened Bangor Golf Club in 1904 and laid the foundation stone of Bangor Hospital in 1909, where a wing was named in her honour. The records of Young & Mackenzie include a bill of quantities relating to the construction of the house in 1890, and an archway in the grounds bears that same date.

By 1901 the house had passed to William F. C. S. Corry, an aerated water manufacturer whose company had been established in 1850 and whose gold-medal rated beverages were produced, according to an 1880 street directory, "exclusively from the Limpid Waters of C & Co's celebrated Cromac Spring", the company being noted as "the original Manufacturers for Exportation of the world renowned Belfast Ginger Ale". The 1901 census records William Corry living at the house with his wife, four daughters, a son also in the aerated water business, and two servants — a cook and a Liverpudlian housemaid. Corry died in 1906, but his family remained at Glenbank for some years; the 1911 census lists three of his daughters as resident, together with a cook and a parlour maid.

By 1913 the house had become the property of Frederick George Maguire, the son-in-law of Samuel Davidson of the Sirocco Works, who was then resident at Seacourt. Maguire was a director at the Sirocco Works and served with Davidson's son in the Royal Irish Rifles Ulster Division, having earlier served alongside him in the North Down regiment of the Ulster Volunteer Force. Maguire made immediate improvements to Glenbank, including the addition of conservatories, valued in 1913, and a signalling station, valued in 1914, both of which are now gone; together these additions raised the valuation to £160. It appears to have been Maguire who added the single-storey extension including a new entrance to the eastern facade, first shown on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1919–26. On his return from military service, Maguire continued to make additions and improvements, with the valuation raised further in 1921, 1926 and 1928 to £185. Valuation records note that a chauffeur's cottage and a motor house had been added by 1928, and Maguire appears also to have added the tennis courts and associated pavilion, first shown on the fifth edition map of 1939. Frederick George Maguire died at Glenbank on 31 July 1933. The building has remained in residential use and now comprises six separate apartments.