36 Station Road, Sydenham, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT4 1RF

36 Station Road is a well-proportioned and finely detailed mid-Victorian two-storey red-brick house dating from around 1865, forming the westernmost unit of a terrace of three known historically as Sandringham Villas — the name still preserved on a small iron plaque at the site entrance. It has group value with its neighbours at 32 and 34 Station Road. The house has since been converted into two apartments, 36A and 36B.

The building sits on the south side of Station Road, accessed through Inglewood Court. It has a rectangular plan with a single-storey bay window to the north, a gabled return to the south-west, and a gabled extension to the south-east. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with angled black clay ridge tiles. Decorated timber bargeboards ornament the north gable, and dentilled cornicing supports ogee-profile cast iron guttering discharging to circular downpipes on the north elevation. There are two red brick chimney stacks with buff brick dressings, corbelled copings, and clay chimney pots.

The walls are laid in rustic red brick to Flemish bond with a projecting plinth, now rendered at lower level. Window openings are square-headed with flat relieving arches and painted sills, all retaining their original double-hung timber sash windows with ogee horns — one-over-one panes to the ground floor and two-over-two horizontal panes to the first floor.

The principal elevation faces west across three bays. The central doorway has a painted architrave and a moulded hood carried on floriated brackets, with a low stone wall of rounded top to either side of the entrance step. The timber panelled door with fanlight opens onto a single brick step, flanked by a square-headed window on each side. The north elevation is gabled at first-floor level and features a single-storey bay window to the ground floor with a window above. The east elevation is abutted by the neighbouring property at 34 Station Road. The rear elevation, facing south, is rendered and was not accessible at the time of survey; it appears to incorporate the gabled return to the south-west and the gabled extension to the south-east.

The setting to the front of the house remains attractive. A gravelled driveway and a modest landscaped garden lie to the north, shared across the terrace, with the driveway continuing east to a modern single-storey pitched-roof garage at the south-east end of the site. The site is enclosed to the north, facing Station Road, by a hedge. Curved red brick dwarf walling ending in plain square-section piers forms the main entrance driveway to Inglewood Court. An iron gate survives at the north-east end of the site onto Station Road, now partially obscured by the hedge; it is supported on simple rectangular-section piers and carries the small iron plaque inscribed with the name Sandringham. The rear yard is enclosed by a red brick fence with a square-headed sheeted timber door. A modern two-storey red-brick housing development, constructed around 1997, lies immediately to the south of the site, accessed through Inglewood Court.

The historical significance of the building is considerable. Prior to the laying of the Belfast, Holywood and Bangor Railway, the townlands of Strandtown and Ballymisert — as shown on the first and second edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1830 and 1858 — were predominantly rural, with only a handful of gentlemen's houses scattered across the land. The opening of Sydenham Railway Station on 1 November 1851 prompted residential development in the area from the mid-19th century onwards, though the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1902 records that only a small number of buildings had been erected along Station Road by the turn of the century; large-scale housing construction along the road did not begin until the 1920s and 1930s. Nos 32–36 Station Road are among the very few surviving examples of Victorian development along the road and are therefore considered both rare and highly significant in their local context.

No. 36 was first recorded in the 1865 Ulster Town Directory and was first valued in the Annual Revisions in 1867, when it was assessed at £28. The three dwellings were built for James Shaw, a local merchant, and his brother Thomas Shaw. On James Shaw's death in 1875, sole ownership of Sandringham Villas passed to Thomas Shaw. Although the Annual Revisions suggest the houses remained vacant until the 1880s, Ulster Town Directories confirm they were in fact occupied from 1868 onwards. The first recorded occupant of No. 36 was Robert Jardin, a baker whose firm Robert Jardin and Co. held premises at the corner of Castle Street and Queen Street in Belfast.

Thomas Shaw retained ownership of the terrace until 1901, when William Minnis, a retired gardener, acquired it and also occupied No. 32 as his private residence. The 1901 census records that No. 36 was at that time occupied by Thomas Hayden, a former Royal Irish Constabulary sergeant, and describes his house as a first-class dwelling of nine rooms. By 1911 the house was occupied by William F. Minnis, superintendent to the local railway and son of William Minnis senior, who continued to live at No. 32 until his death in 1913. The younger William Minnis retained ownership of nos 32–36 Station Road until at least the 1970s.

Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935, the value of No. 36 was raised to £33, and it was increased again to £35 by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72), at which time the property was still recorded as owned by William F. Minnis. The terrace was listed in 1982. The modern two-storey return to the rear of No. 36 was added around 1997. The building is architecturally comparable to the contemporary red brick terraces at 268–272 Antrim Road in North Belfast, which share almost the same layout.