Mosella, 39 Station Road, Holywood, Co Down, BT18 0BP

Mosella is a picturesque one-and-a-half-storey detached house built around 1870, located on the north side of Station Road in Craigavad, near Bangor. It represents the suburban villa development that transformed this stretch of the North Down coast following the opening of the railway to Bangor in 1865, when the area became more accessible to middle-ranking professional and mercantile families.

The house is rectangular on plan with a full-height return to the rear, abutted by small extensions to the northwest and southeast, a sunroom and conservatory to the southeast, and a projecting porch to the front. The pitched natural slate roof features blue and black angled ridge tiles and decorative bargeboards to the gables. Four rendered chimneystacks rise from the main block, with a large chimneystack to the rear return bearing three tall decorative clay pots. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods run along the projecting eaves.

The exterior walls are painted smooth render. The principal southwest-facing elevation is five openings wide at ground floor, with three wall-head dormers to the centre of the first floor. Windows throughout are timber sliding sash with horns set in chamfered reveals. Ground floor windows feature decorative long-and-short surrounds, while attic floor windows are pointed-headed with bargeboards and continuous bracketed sills. The central gabled porch contains a two-panelled double-leaf timber door with brass furniture, sidelights, and transom light (a replacement).

The northwest elevation has two windows to the first floor. The northeast elevation features a half-dormer window to the right and is abutted at its centre by the full-height return. A small single-storey extension with a lean-to roof and uPVC door adjoins this side. The return itself has modern timber-framed windows to ground and first floor levels, with a diminutive window to the first floor of its northwest elevation and a window to the ground floor. The southeast elevation of the return includes a modern glazed door with a slated canopy bearing tall terracotta ridge tiles, decorative bargeboard, and timber brackets. To the left is a sunroom surmounted by a gabled window; further left is a one-and-a-half-storey gabled return with windows to each floor. The southeast elevation proper has two attic floor windows and is abutted at ground floor by a modern timber conservatory.

The house stands set back from Station Road with a gravelled driveway to the east. The setting is leafy and spacious, with lawned gardens to north and south enclosed by hedgerow and mature trees on all sides. A rubble stone boundary wall and timber gate mark the eastern boundary.

Mosella and its neighbour, The Ivies, were developed by James McCutcheon on a site previously occupied by simpler structures. The current house appears to be either a complete rebuild or remodelling of an earlier structure that is shown on both the first and second editions of the Ordnance Survey maps. The house first appears in valuation records in 1872 as a newly-built vacant house and yard valued at £24, and is first named on the third edition of the Ordnance Survey map (1900-02). The first recorded tenant was James Ingles in 1880, followed in 1887 by John M Johnston of W J Johnston and Sons, tea and sugar merchants with premises in Pottinger's Entry, Belfast. By 1901, Johnston had married Hannah McCutcheon, daughter of the neighbouring family. Henry McKisack MD became owner in 1900, with Thomas J King, a Quaker coal merchant, in residence by 1901. The house passed to the Arthurs family in 1909, with Saidee Arthurs, a 43-year-old spinster and property owner, recorded as head of household in the 1911 census. The Arthurs family remained in residence until at least 1930. The porch was already present by the first architectural survey in 1973, though it was believed to be a relatively recent addition at that time. The house continues in domestic use with some recent sympathetic additions to the rear.