731 Antrim Road, Belfast, BT15 4EL

731 Antrim Road, Belfast is a large, two and a half-storey suburban villa built in 1894, constructed in decorative red brick. The house is set on the east side of Antrim Road at its junction with Downview Avenue and is surrounded by a relatively large garden.

The architectural style is free Victorian, featuring a typical eclectic mix of vaguely classical and Arts and Craft detailing. This includes decorative mouldings to openings, canted bays, fretted bargeboards, and tall chimneys with decorative brick corbelling and string courses.

The symmetrical south-facing front façade is dominated by a slightly projecting two-storey central bay. A short flight of steps leads to the front door, above which runs a curved parapet or string finished at either end with a classical Greek urn set on a small plinth. The timber front door is relatively large with six panels; the upper panels have semicircular arched heads. Side panels flank the door, each with a semicircular-headed, acid-etched light over a timber apron. Flanfing the door opening are chamfered pilasters supporting a bracketed gabled timber porch. The pediment is formed in pierced timber with a segmental arched base, and the eaves to the slated roof overhang with a small timber finial at the apex.

Directly above the doorway is a moulded brick stringcourse comprising a series of square tiles, each decorated with a stylised flower motif, with plain painted quoins at each corner. Above this runs a plain painted projecting cill course. Centred on the first floor of the bay is a segmental arch-headed sash window with no astragals. The top of the bay forms a gabled half dormer, with a pair of semicircular arch-headed windows with brick archivolt and moulded and painted keystone featuring a bunch of grapes motif. The gabled roof overhangs, with the pediment formed in pierced timber, slated roof with decorative ridge tiles, and a small clay finial.

To the left and right of the bay on the ground floor is a single large sash window, each with a moulded and painted pediment supported on consul brackets. Similar windows without pediments appear on the first floor, resting on the decorative stringcourse which extends around the east, south and west facades. The eaves course is in moulded brick with a reeded motif, continuing around these three facades.

The east facade features a two-storey flat-roofed canted bay on its left side with segmental arch-headed sash windows to each face on both ground and first floors. The ground floor of the bay is finished in plain render while the upper section continues the brick detailing. To the right of this bay on the ground floor is a paired sash window with a moulded and painted bracketed projecting cornice and blocking course detail above. The first floor has a similar pair of windows with brick archivolt and moulded dripstone in place of the decorative detail; each pair has a rendered mullion. Above the first floor window heads, the reeded eaves course continues as a stringcourse.

At the centre of the gable is a triple window arrangement, each window semicircular arch-headed with moulded dripstone and painted and moulded keystone with a bunch of grapes motif. To the apex of the gable, a decorative timber infill panel is inscribed with the date 1894.

To the far right of the east facade is the east side of a rear two-storey return, almost full width with the east and west sides set back slightly from the line of the main house facades. These walls merge to the north with the yard walls. The walls may have lean-to outhouses attached, although this could not be confirmed. The rear of the main roof continues down in the same plane to cover the return, which is lower, with the sides of this roof hipped.

To the ground floor of the east side of the return is a door to the left with a sash window to the right, both with brick archivolts and moulded dripstones. The door may originally have been a window. A small stair with modern wrought iron railings serves the door. To the first floor is a single flat arch window.

The west façade of the main house is identical to the east façade except that the two-storey bay has a hipped and slated roof. To the left is the west side of the rear return, which has a single sash window to the ground floor and three evenly spaced narrower windows to the first floor.

The north face ground floor is obscured by the high yard wall. To the left of the first floor is a large sash window, with a much smaller similar sash window immediately to its right.

The roof throughout is covered in natural slate with decorative ridge tiles and finials. Four tall chimney stacks in total (two to front and rear) have decorative brick corbelling and stringcourses, with what appear to be original clay chimney pots. To the north face of the roof are a number of cast iron roof lights. Rainwater goods are in cast iron.

The house was built in 1894, possibly for the linen merchant James Stewart. It appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1901 and is listed in early 1900s editions of the Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory under the name Beechmount.