21 Knockmore Park, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 3SL

21 Knockmore Park is a two-storey inter-war house built in 1924, designed in an uncommon Mediterranean villa style. It is attributed to Ronald Ingleby Smith and Thomas F.O. Rippingham, who were at the time the leading official government architects in Northern Ireland. The house was built for Major Percy E. Shepherd, Director of Works for the Government of Northern Ireland, and represents one of the very few private residential commissions undertaken by either architect, whose usual output was confined to official government buildings typically executed in a conventional English-inspired neo-Georgian style.

The house has rendered walls and green pantiled roofs and stands in a suburban residential setting, set slightly back from the public road within its own garden, with its main entrance facing north.

The north (entrance) elevation is arranged as a triune composition: a central entrance bay with a parapet roof is flanked on each side by hipped-roof end bays. The roofline is divided into three sections by raking raised copings that return from the extremities of the central bay and rise up to a pair of chimneys. The walling is painted smooth render with a slightly projecting plinth and a swept horizontal drip moulding at window-head level in the end bays, arching into a semi-circle where it passes over a window. A shallow keystone punctuates the coping of the parapet. The green Roman tile roofs have prominent ridges, and the hipped roofs oversail the end bays on flat soffits. The two short chimneys are of octagonal form, smooth rendered, and carry stub pots. Rainwater goods are of uPVC.

The windows are modern replacement hardwood fixed lights on top-hung vents, replacing what would originally have been small-paned windows, most likely in casement or sliding sash form and probably of neo-Georgian character. On the first floor of the central entrance bay are three semi-circular arched openings with margins to the arched top lights, flanked by small square openings in the side bays. The ground floor of the side bays contains both large and small openings, the larger ones having the swept plaster drip moulding arching over them. Window cills throughout are formed by two projecting layers of corrugated-profile tiles.

The entrance itself is recessed within a rectangular opening and contains a panelled double door surmounted by a flat concrete canopy supported on shaped brackets ornamented with a patera. Fixed to the underside of the canopy is an original splayed hexagonal ceiling light. To the left of the entrance, set slightly back from the front wall plane, is a single-storey double garage whose smooth rendered wall sweeps up to the eaves level of the house, forming a screen to a side yard. An elongated ball finial surmounts the left-hand extremity of the garage façade. The garage doors are of modern up-and-over type, surmounted by five-paned fanlights.

The west elevation uses the same materials as the front. Three rectangular replacement hardwood windows occupy the first floor, each with timber shutters fixed to either side and painted dark green, their heads formed by the flat soffit of the eaves. At ground floor level there is a projecting canted bay with a flat lead-covered roof, also entirely refenestrated with modern replacements.

The south (rear) elevation is of similar character and materials to the front and is also arranged as a triune composition, with a comparable arrangement of parapet and hipped roofs. However, the central bay here has plain projecting pilaster piers at its extremities, and its parapet rakes up very slightly to the centre without a keystone. Three rectangular first-floor windows of modern fixed-light and top-hung type with tile cills occupy the central bay, with three segmental-headed windows, similarly glazed, below them at ground floor level. The left-hand bay contains a pair of large coupled openings set in semi-circular arched recesses: the left-hand opening contains a modern rectangular glazed door and the right-hand one a modern rectangular window, both surmounted by fanlights with radial margins. Between the openings is a pier containing an engaged semi-column of Tuscan type, surmounted by a cornice block from which the arches spring and resting on a concrete cill extending between the two openings. This engaged Tuscan column is a distinctive and unusual detail that also appears on the interior. The right-hand bay contains a rectangular door and a rectangular window, both set in semi-circular arches formed by the swept drip moulding of the render, the coupled arches corresponding in profile to those of the left-hand bay. The east elevation is similar to the west, with three comparable first-floor windows, most of the ground floor being covered by the projecting garage block to the right and a shallower lean-to projection to the left, both roofed with green pantiles.

The house is approached from the street through a gateway formed by plain square smooth-rendered piers and a pair of timber gates, each containing five square openings that echo the fanlights of the garage. The front boundary is formed by vertical timber boards with rounded tops. A small grassed front garden contains a pair of palm-like trees that create a vestigial gateway to the front door. To the rear is a large grassed garden with some mature trees. The house next door to the east is also in a Mediterranean villa style with similar roofing and chimneys and is reputedly the work of the same architects, designed at the same time.

Ronald Ingleby Smith was recruited as Senior Architect when the Chief Architect's Branch was established within the Ministry of Finance in 1922, following the partition of Ireland and the creation of Northern Ireland as a new state. He preferred designing in a neo-Classical style, and notable works attributed to him include Stranmillis College on Stranmillis Road (designed 1924), a Frenchified neo-Georgian building with walls of Cornish purple brick on a Portland stone base with cornice and dressings in the same stone, and the Agriculture Building at Queen's University Belfast on Elmwood Avenue (designed by Smith and built 1924 to 1928), a lively neo-Georgian design with Wrenian swags and a Mannerist doorway. A third storey was added to the latter in 1952 by Rippingham. Smith and Rippingham jointly designed Telephone House on Cromac Street (1932 to 1934), an enormous steel-framed block described as modernist yet also neo-Georgian. A series of plain neo-Georgian satellite telephone exchanges followed under Smith's direction, notable examples being at Paulett Avenue and Windsor Park (1933). One of Smith's last works was the Tomb of Lord Craigavon in the grounds of Stormont, completed in 1942; Smith died just before its completion and was succeeded as Chief Architect to the Ministry of Finance by Rippingham.

Thomas F.O. Rippingham — known as "Thomas" to some and "Rip" to others — was a reserved and retiring English architect who had initially served in the Board of Works in London before being recruited by Smith and R.S. Wilshere to join the architect's branch of the Department of Finance in Belfast in 1922 to 1923. Despite being widely regarded as the most talented architect in the office from an early stage, his contributions were often obscured because Smith exercised his right to sign every drawing produced by the office, meaning many buildings attributed to Smith were substantially Rippingham's work, particularly in terms of detailing and often original design. By the 1930s he was designing buildings in his own right. His public buildings included rural police stations of the 1920s and 1930s in a distinctive Georgian style with sash windows, recessed ground-floor arches, wide eaves, hipped roofs and gable-ended chimneys — a surviving example being Bushmills Station, with another at Cloughmills. His neo-Georgian public buildings include the post office at Banbridge and the GPO Sorting Office at Smithfield in Belfast (designed 1938, now demolished). In Telephone House he used Art Deco motifs to the vertically recessed window panels. In 1944 he designed the Henry Garrett Building physical education centre at Stranmillis College, where functional and traditional ideas are combined; a hallmark of his style from this building onwards was the use of circular windows. Post-war factory work included the Bairnswear factory in Armagh (designed 1950), notable for a stairwell in the manner of Erich Mendelsohn. His most celebrated work was the Cregagh Housing Estate on Cregagh Road and Mount Merrion Avenue, a development of 924 dwellings over a 91-acre site undertaken for the newly formed Northern Ireland Housing Trust, built between 1945 and 1949. The scheme used a continuous frontage to eliminate unsightly rear garden views, employed a strictly utilitarian structure due to material scarcity — with brickwork confined to outer walls and flat concrete roofs used in place of unavailable tiles and slates — and included shops, community buildings and a primary school designed by Rippingham and built in 1949. It won universal contemporary praise and attracted delegations from across the United Kingdom, going on to win the Housing Medal awarded by the Ministry of Health in 1951 for the best post-war estate in Northern Ireland. Rippingham also worked regularly with officials from the Ancient Monuments Branch; early responsibilities included the conversion of Hillsborough Castle from private to Government House, and among his last tasks was the restoration of Carrickfergus Castle. His last public building was the Petty Sessions Court House in Chichester Street, Belfast. He retired in 1956. Throughout his career Rippingham designed very few private dwellings — he never built a house for himself, reportedly due to a disagreement with his wife over the arrangement of living and dining spaces, and lived his entire working life in rented accommodation. The private houses he did design were almost exclusively for close colleagues or friends. Known examples include The Warren at Donaghadee, built for a colleague; a house at Drumbo built for his daughter (now demolished); and a gabled house called Seamount in Cultra, Holywood, probably built in the early 1930s.

Architecturally, the house is considered of limited interest, given its late date and the fact that its original appearance and character have been adversely affected by the replacement of the original windows with inappropriate modern substitutes.