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

Willesden, 75 Church Road, Holywood, was a mildly classical two-storey gabled house built in 1861, now demolished. It was originally an asymmetrical, middling-sized residence positioned on the south-west side of Church Road overlooking Holywood town centre.

The building was constructed by John R. Neill, a partner in Neill Brothers, noted jewellers and watchmakers of High Street and Donegall Place, Belfast. It was purchased by Alexander Finlay in the later 1860s and remained within that family, passing subsequently to Archibald and then in the 1960s to Rev. James S, who later sold it. The house was converted to a nursing home in the 1980s and was demolished in December 1999.

The south-west front elevation featured a slightly projecting two-storey bay with in-and-out quoins. The ground floor comprised a single-storey chamfered bay with simple moulded double pilasters as piers and window openings resting on a shared sill, surmounted by a moulded and projecting cornice with dentils and topped by a moulded balustrade. The first floor displayed 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 with timber pilasters. The four-panel front door featured semicircular moulding to the upper panels, with glazed semicircular arch heads to the upper parts of the margin panels and timber panelling below. Door panels and pilaster faces bore hipped roof shapes to their raised mouldings. A projecting corniced canopy with dentils and blocking course, supported on square columns, protected the entrance. To the left of the door was a paired window with pilaster-form separating pier and side mouldings, resting on a shared cill and topped by a projecting cornice with dentils and blocking course. To the right of the central bay were two paired ground-floor window arrangements, simplified without pilasters. Two evenly spaced window openings occupied the first floor, with those above the porch being slightly narrower. Most windows were PVC without astragals, except those above the porch, which retained timber frames.

The north-east elevation featured a projecting two-storey wing identical to the front elevation, except that the first-floor right-side window had been blocked. A two-storey open steel return stair led to a small first-floor door immediately left of the projecting bay. Ground-floor left displayed a paired window with simplified cornice, while the first floor had a plain window opening. In-and-out quoins immediately left delineated the original house boundary. A two-storey return, probably dating from the late nineteenth century, occupied the area immediately left, featuring two paired window arrangements at ground floor similar to those previously described. A small single-storey extension at the far left merged with a high yard wall.

The south-west rear face comprised two side wings, both two-storey. The left wing was gabled with a blank gable end. The right wing, slightly longer and featuring a partial hip, had one first-floor window and one glazed ground-floor door, both centrally placed. A narrow court between the wings allowed views of a small portion of the original south-west façade, which displayed a paired window arrangement with projecting cornice at ground floor and a single first-floor window.

The south-east rear façade's right side featured the three-storey gable of an 1888 return. The second floor held two evenly spaced timber sash windows with horizontal astragals. The first floor contained a modern PVC window to the right of centre, with a flat-roofed extension at ground level. To the left were two modern windows, and to the right a timber door with vertical timber boarding. The main return's left side merged with two-storey gables; the middle gable had two evenly spaced timber sash window openings, while the gable to the far left had one similar but wider and shorter window to its right side. An outhouse with mono pitch roof separated the rear yard-facing right side from the left side, which was formed by the south-west face of a circa 1980s bedroom wing. This merges with the other gables and displayed four windows to the first floor, two windows to the right of the ground floor, a door to the left, and a further window to the far left.

External walls were finished in lined render, with corners to the front of the original 1861 building featuring chamfered and moulded in-and-out quoins. The main roof was finished in Bangor Blue slate, with gables displaying plain slightly overhanging barge boards. Rainwater goods and soil stacks were predominantly PVC. All chimney stacks had been removed from the front portion of the building; the 1888 return retained three rendered chimney stacks with moulded and chamfered copings, two to the ridge and one to the verge line.

The building underwent extensive renovation in 1888, at which time the two-storey return was probably added to the south-east corner. Large wings were added to the north-west and south-west corners in the 1980s, with these extensions almost doubling the original footprint and rendering the front elevation nearly symmetrical.

To the north-east of the side garden stood a large block of polished granite inscribed with various diagrams and formulae. This was commissioned by Archibald Finlay in 1947 to celebrate the geometry associated with the cube root of the number two.