Willesden, 75 Church Road, Holywood, County Down, BT18 9BX

Willesden, 75 Church Road, Holywood

This mildly classical two-storey gabled house was built in 1861 and stood on the south-west side of Church Road overlooking Holywood town centre. The building has since been demolished.

At the time of survey in November 1999, the original asymmetrical, middling-sized house had been substantially altered by two modern extensions that rendered the front elevation nearly symmetrical and almost doubled the original footprint. The external walls were finished in lined render, with the original 1861 building having chamfered and moulded in-and-out quoins at the corners. The main roof was finished with Bangor Blue slate, and gables had plain and slightly overhanging barge boards.

The south-west front elevation featured a slightly projecting two-storey bay with in-and-out quoins at its centre. The ground floor had a single-storey chamfered bay with simple moulded double pilasters as piers, with window openings resting on a shared sill and surmounted by a moulded and projecting cornice with dentils topped by a moulded balustrade. The first floor had a centrally placed paired window arrangement with linked drip moulding with label stops.

To the left of the bay was a recessed front door screen framed with timber pilasters. The four-panel front door had semicircular moulding to the upper panels, with the upper parts of the margin panels glazed with semicircular arch heads and the lower sections having timber panelling. All door panels and pilaster faces had hipped roof shapes to their raised mouldings. A projecting corniced canopy with dentils and blocking course, supported on square columns, covered the entrance. To the left of the front door was a paired window with pilaster-formed separating pier and side mouldings, resting on a shared cill and surmounted by a projecting cornice with dentils and blocking course. To the right of the central bay were two paired ground floor window arrangements without pilasters, and two evenly spaced window openings on the first floor. Most windows were PVC without astragals, except those above the porch which remained timber.

The north-east elevation had a projecting two-storey wing identical to the front except for a blocked window on the first floor's right side. A two-storey open steel return stair led to a small first floor door immediately left of the bay. To the immediate left of this wing were in-and-out quoins delineating the original house's shape. A two-storey return, probably dating from the late nineteenth century, extended further left with paired window arrangements.

The rear south-west face had two two-storey side wings, the left one gabled with a blank gable end, and the right one slightly longer with a partial hip, containing one first-floor window and one glazed ground-floor door both centrally placed. Between the wings was a narrow court allowing views of a small section of the original south-west façade with its paired window arrangement and projecting cornice.

The rear south-east façade featured a three-storey gable from an 1888 return. The second floor had two evenly spaced timber sash windows with horizontal astragals. The first floor had a modern PVC window, and the ground level had a flat-roofed extension. To the left were two modern windows and a timber door with vertical boarding. Further left, two-storey gables merged together, the middle one having two evenly spaced timber sash windows, and the far left gable having one wider, shorter window. A small outhouse with a mono pitch roof separated this section from the rear yard. The left section was formed by the south-west face of a bedroom wing dating from approximately 1980, which had four first-floor windows and two ground-floor windows to the right, a door to the left, and another window to the far left.

The 1888 return had three rendered chimney stacks with moulded and chamfered copings, two positioned to the ridge and one to the verge line. All chimney stacks had been removed from the front portion of the original building. Rainwater goods and soil stacks were mainly PVC.