Princetown Villa, 66 Princetown Road, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 3DT

Princetown Villa is a three-bay two-storey house with attic, built around 1900 to designs by J C McCandliss for developer James Campbell. It stands on a raised site to the east of Princetown Road in Bangor, overlooking Bangor Bay and Marina.

The house is square on plan with two-storey canted bays to the front and south elevations. It is finished in painted render with vermiculated quoins and features a pitched natural slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles and finials. Painted rendered chimney stacks have clay pots. Decorative bargeboards ornament the gables. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods sit on decorative corbelled eaves.

The principal north-east elevation is three openings wide and features two-storey canted bays with balustraded and dentilled parapets. At the centre stands a portico with squared Doric columns and plain entablature. Above this, at first-floor level, is a single window opening surmounted by a stucco panel with ivy leaf design. Windows are segmental-headed throughout (except where otherwise stated) and are infilled with concrete blocks. The canted bay windows have moulded surrounds with keyblocks. A moulded string course runs between floors, and the cornice is decorated with stars.

The south-east elevation has a two-storey canted bay to the left with square-headed windows, two windows at attic level, and single windows at ground and first floor to the right. The south-west elevation is blank. The north-west elevation is partially concealed but shows two attic windows and two square-headed first-floor windows.

The house is of good quality architectural detailing typical of the period and exemplifies the Victorian villas developed along the Esplanade for wealthy merchants and professional classes as Bangor grew as a seaside resort during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The site is accessed by a lane to the east of Princetown Road and is bounded by a stone wall to the east. The house currently stands vacant and has suffered damage including loss of the rear return.

James Campbell, a retired farmer who died in 1915, developed the site and built two houses: this villa and his own residence at 68 Princetown Road, both designed by J C McCandliss. The house first appears in valuation records in 1901 as a newly-built vacant dwelling with offices, yard and garden, valued at £69 9s, with surrounding land valued at £11. By 1907 it was let to William Marshall, a flour merchant, and remained occupied by the Marshall family until at least the 1930s. The 1911 census records it as a twelve-room house of the first class with a trained nurse, housemaid and cook on staff. In 1920 the valuation was raised to £74 9s following the addition of a motor house. By 1930 William Marshall's widow, Elizabeth S Marshall, was the occupier. The house appeared still inhabited at the time of the first survey in 1974 but has since become vacant.