Rhubarb Cottage, 36 Ballysillan Road, Belfast, County Antrim

Rhubarb Cottage, 36 Ballysillan Road, Belfast

Rhubarb Cottage is a former gate lodge built in 1876 to designs by Young and Mackenzie, one of Belfast's most successful and prolific architectural partnerships, formed around 1867 between Robert Young and John Mackenzie. It is a well-proportioned, picturesque, three-bay single-storey painted brick structure, constructed as the second gate lodge serving Clearstream Cottage — a house dating from the 1830s that has since been demolished. The lodge sits on a slightly elevated site on the north side of Ballysillan Road in the townland of Ballysillan Lower, rotated so that its plan is orientated on an east-west axis, which distinguishes it visually from the surrounding housing. The building was listed in 1978 and continues in use as a private dwelling; it also serves as the headquarters of the Deborda Institute, a Northern Ireland-based international organisation promoting inclusive voting procedures.

Architectural Character and Exterior

The building's character is defined above all by its roof: a hipped form with lead-rolled ridges and distinctive fish-scale slates to all slopes except the rear return, which is covered in plain slates. Half-round gutters and circular downpipes are in uPVC. A centrally placed paired chimney stack, set diagonally and rising from a rendered plinth, carries two tall clay pots. Overhanging eaves and timber ornamental bargeboards with carved scrolls and applied motifs further enrich the roofline, along with a small timber finial. The walls throughout are painted brick laid in English Garden Wall bond.

The principal elevation faces east. At its centre is a projecting gabled porch with a painted timber panelled entrance door and a plain fanlight above. The bargeboards to this gable feature carved scrolls, applied motifs, and a small timber finial. On either side of the porch is a segmental arched opening containing a tripartite casement window, with panes divided into four horizontally, set above a projecting painted cill.

The south elevation has painted brick walls and a 3/3-pane top-hung timber window at its centre. At the west end of this elevation is a flat-roofed extension with rendered walls to cill level and glass inserted into the upper part of the wall; it has a central timber sheeted half-door, painted.

The west elevation includes a flat-roofed extension to the south with fixed glass to the upper wall and render below. A small flat-roofed section with painted brick walls and a small timber casement window links this to a rear gabled return. The gable wall of the return has a segmental arched opening centrally placed, containing a paired casement window with panes divided into three horizontally. Plain timber bargeboards with scrolled ends and a small timber finial finish the gable. A lean-to glasshouse occupies the north end of this elevation.

The north elevation has a lean-to glasshouse set into the corner between the rear return and the main block. The main block wall is painted brick, with a centrally placed modern timber cantilevered bay window featuring a top-hung casement to its middle section and a glazed pitched roof.

Materials summary: natural slate and felt roofing; uPVC rainwater goods; painted brick and render walling; timber casement windows.

Setting

The lodge is set behind a random rubble stone boundary wall with stone set upright as coping and square pillars. A small timber pedestrian gate gives access to the garden, from which a path winds to the entrance door. The flat-roofed rear extension detracts somewhat from the building's historic character, though the dominant roofscape — fish-scale slates, overhanging eaves, decorative bargeboards, and diagonally set paired chimney stacks — ensures the building retains a strongly picturesque appearance.

Historical Background

Clearstream Cottage, the main house this lodge served, appeared on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–33, depicted as a rectangular building beside an underground stream from which it took its name. In the 1830s it was occupied by Lieutenant E. C. Miller, a government emigration agent with offices at the Custom House in Belfast. By the 1840s a Mr J. Blair had taken possession, described in contemporary directories as a member of the gentry or nobility. The Blair family held Clearstream for three decades, though they appear to have leased it to various tenants: in 1852 a Mr Richard Bell briefly occupied the property.

The current building is the second gate lodge on the site. The first lodge, not shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1857, had been built by 1859, when Griffith's Valuation recorded it as valued at £1 and 10 shillings and occupied by a Mr James Williamson. The present lodge was built in 1876 at a cost of £100, also initially occupied by James Williamson. The architectural historian J. A. K. Dean later described it as "surprisingly late in date" and "a rare survival in the city's urban spread."

In 1876, the same year the new lodge was built, the Blair family vacated Clearstream Cottage. Robert McBride, a local linen manufacturer and founder of Robert McBride and Co. — a linen factory on Ormeau Avenue — took possession and resided there until 1882. Williamson vacated the lodge the same year, when a Mr John Ramsay took over. The lodge stood vacant from 1891 when William Cairns, a linen weaving factory manager, purchased Clearstream. By 1901 the lodge was occupied by Thomas Gribben, a local farm labourer; by 1911, by Thomas Williamson, employed as Cairns's gardener. The 1911 census building return classified the lodge as a second-class dwelling of four rooms.

The Cairns family continued to occupy Clearstream until the 1960s. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (covering 1936–57), the lodge was occupied by a Mr Henry White and had risen in rateable value to £6. Clearstream Cottage itself was demolished in 1965, after which the gate lodge continued in residential use. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the lodge had been leased by the Cairns family to a Mr G. White at a rateable value of £7.

A renovation carried out in 1992 included the reslating of the roof, the replacement of timber fascias, and the construction of the timber conservatory to the south side of the lodge.