85 Victoria Road, Holywood, County Down, BT18 9BG

85 Victoria Road, Holywood

A two-storey three-bay semi-detached Victorian villa built around 1855, located on a secluded site off Victoria Road to the east of Holywood town centre. It forms one of a pair of villas (along with HB23/20/067B) and represents a robust example of the mid-Victorian domestic architecture that developed in the area following the arrival of the railway to Holywood in 1848.

The building is rectangular on plan with a box bay to the front, canted bay and box bay to the north side, a double-height return and single-storey extension (both to the side). The roof is hipped with natural slate and rectangular chimney stacks with dentilled plinths. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods sit on projecting corbelled eaves (plastic to the side return). The walling is painted smooth render with quoins and plinth.

The principal elevation faces west. The first floor features a central uPVC window flanked by round-headed tripartite openings with hood mouldings and decorative stops. The ground floor has a box bay window with tripartite opening and replacement casement glazing to the left, an original 1/1 timber mullioned window to the right, and a central portico. The portico comprises four squared Doric columns surmounted by a plain entablature with moulded string course and dentilled cornice, with glazing to the cheeks. The inner doorway has two bolection-moulded square raised-and-fielded panels surmounted by two round-headed glazed panels, brass door furniture including a lion's head knocker, obscurely glazed side lights and transom light with pilaster jambs. All bay windows have a torus moulded course and dentilled eaves. Three window openings serve the double-height and single-storey extension to the right.

The north elevation comprises a projecting canted bay to the ground floor with a tripartite window opening to the first floor, and a box bay to the ground floor on the left with a replacement window to the first floor. The east elevation is abutted by the adjoining building HB23/20/067B. The south elevation has a single uPVC window and double-leaf timber door with transom light to the right, with a double-height return abutted to the left containing four asymmetrical uPVC windows to the first floor. The exposed section to the right has a single uPVC window to the first floor and two to the ground floor, with the return abutted at ground floor by a single-storey extension containing a modern timber half-door and modern timber window.

Windows are replacement timber and uPVC throughout unless otherwise stated. The house retains most of its historic character and original detailing despite the loss of its windows and minor alterations to the first floor plan.

The building is situated in a mature secluded site accessed via a gravelled driveway off a private lane to the south of Victoria Road. It is bounded to the lane by a painted masonry wall with cast-iron gate, and by mature hedgerow on all other sides. The property features a mature sloping garden to the front and paved courtyard to the rear.

Historical Context

The house was built around 1855 as one of a pair of semi-detached villas for the prosperous merchant and professional classes as Victoria Road began to develop in the mid-nineteenth century. The opening of the railway to Holywood in 1848 provided easy access to Belfast and attracted those of increasing prosperity seeking healthier and more attractive surroundings away from the city centre. The building first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, captioned 'Clermont'.

The house was initially occupied by Captain Alexander Blakely and leased from Reverend Henry Henderson. Captain Alexander Blakely (1827–68) was a designer and manufacturer of ordnance, and the cannon bearing his name became indelibly associated with the American Civil War where they were used by the Confederate States. Thirty-two of his guns still exist in North America, highly prized by collectors. Blakely sold his guns to many countries including China, Italy, Russia and Peru, but was famously unsuccessful in selling them to the British government. Born in Sligo, the son of the Very Reverend Theophilus Alexander (later Dean of Down), he served in the Crimean War. On his return he moved to a house in West London, though he travelled widely and spent much time at Clermont in the 1860s, by which time he had become a respected expert on ordnance. He was one of the first to apply theoretical science to weapons manufacture and was a member of several learned societies including the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Irish Academy. By 1866 he was a wealthy man with a large house in Park Lane and a 300-ton steam yacht, but he subsequently began an adulterous relationship and was forced to flee the country after being named in divorce proceedings. He and his lover died of yellow fever in Peru in 1868.

Reverend Henry Henderson, the developer and landlord, was minister of Holywood First Presbyterian Church from 1844 until his death in 1879 and was a regular columnist in the Belfast Weekly News under the pseudonym "Ulster-Scot". The property was valued at £36, later raised to £47, with the valuer commenting on the elegance of the villas. A succession of occupants followed, with valuations gradually falling to £35 in 1882 and £32 in 1891. By 1890 the immediate lessor was John Marsh, a Quaker married to Antoinette, a niece of the architect Thomas Jackson.

The house remains in use as a domestic dwelling.