350 Antrim Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT15 5AE

350 Antrim Road is a mid-terraced, two-bay, two-storey with attic former house, built around 1877 to designs by Young and Mackenzie, a prominent Belfast architectural partnership. It forms part of a terrace of seven similar red brick Victorian houses on the west side of Antrim Road, between Hopefield Avenue and Cedar Avenue, in the townland of Skegoneill.

The building is three bays wide on its east front elevation and L-shaped on plan, possibly interlocking with the neighbouring No. 348. It sits within an enclosed front garden and rear yard, set back from the road.

Architectural Overview

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles and exposed rafter tails. Lead valleys and cast-iron rainwater goods are retained. A profiled and corbelled red brick chimney stack with clay pots rises from the north party wall. The external walls are red brick laid in Flemish bond with original pointing, moulded red brick string courses, and flush sandstone ashlar dressings. The plinth course is rock-faced uncoursed squared sandstone with a chamfered sandstone trim.

Window openings are square-headed and fitted with original single-pane timber sash windows with slender ogee horns, painted sandstone ashlar cills, and flush lintels with bowtel mouldings.

Front Elevation

The principal east-facing front has three bays. To the right, a canted bay window rises to attic level, where it becomes a rectangular half-timbered gabled oriel window containing a tripartite timber sash window, decorative curved timber brackets to sheeted eaves, and a timber bargeboard. To the left is a wall-head dormer window with a hipped roof, terracotta finial, exposed rafter feet, and paired square-headed openings with 2/1-pane timber sash windows.

At the centre is a shouldered principal entrance with a sandstone lintel bearing foliate and floral carvings. The original timber panelled door has six panels, bolection mouldings, original brass furniture, and a plain fanlight. The door opens onto three replacement nosed concrete steps and an original flagstone-paved footpath.

Rear and Side Elevations

The south side elevation is abutted by the adjoining No. 348. The north side elevation is abutted by No. 352.

The west rear elevation is partly abutted on the right by a two-storey red brick lean-to with a natural slate roof and original timber sash windows, one of which contains Arts and Crafts style leaded coloured glass. The remainder of the west elevation is red brick, with one original sash window at attic level set between the lean-to and a row of exposed rafter tails at the eaves of the main roof. A small skylight is set into the roof on the opposite side. Two further windows to the left of the lean-to, at ground and first floor level, have been replaced with timber casement windows, and a small original sliding sash is retained to the cheek of the return overlooking the yard. A garage door in the replacement rear yard wall suggests that a single-storey flat-roofed extension has been added to the rear, meaning the original outhouses are likely to have been demolished.

Historical Context

The Antrim Road was originally laid out in 1830. By the 1850s, the land to the north of the Belfast Waterworks and the Limestone Road remained largely rural in character, as recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858. As Belfast's population grew through the expansion of shipbuilding, rope-making, and textile industries in the mid-19th century, the townland of Skegoneill became one of the most affluent areas in the city, attracting gentlemen's mansions and wealthy merchants' houses.

Nos 344 to 350 Antrim Road — known collectively as Clonsilla — were built on the grounds of Hopefield House, a two-storey six-bay mansion formerly occupied by the Sinclair family. The four houses were constructed for Andrew Wright, a local pawnbroker and clerk at the Belfast Loan Office (at Nos 49–51 Ann Street), who himself resided at No. 3 Cranston Place. The terrace was designed by Young and Mackenzie, an architectural partnership formed between Robert Young and John Mackenzie around 1867. The Dictionary of Irish Architects describes the firm as "the leading architects for the Presbyterian Church in the North-East," noting that they also received some of the most important commercial commissions in the city and designed a large number of contemporary terraces across Belfast during the Victorian period. A further two houses at Nos 352–354 were erected in 1899 in a similar style and are attached to the north end of the original four.

The rateable value of No. 350 was set at £44 in 1877. The first recorded occupant was Thomas Cunningham, Clerk of the Peace for County Antrim. By 1901 the house had passed to William Moreland, a local flour merchant. The 1911 census classified No. 350 as a first-class dwelling consisting of eleven rooms, with a wash house and coal house as its sole outbuildings. By the 1930s, ownership of the entire terrace had passed to a Mr Francis Curley, and the rateable value had been slightly reduced to £43 in the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57). The McCance family occupied the house from the 1930s to the 1970s. Ownership passed to a Mr H. Crawford by the 1950s, and by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) the total assessed value had fallen to £39.

Nos 344–354 Antrim Road were listed in 1987. According to Northern Ireland Environment Agency Historic Buildings records, No. 350 underwent extensive renovation in 1990, which included re-slating the roof in second-hand slate, repointing the brickwork, and replacing the original entrance door.

Setting and Group Value

The house is set back from Antrim Road with a front lawn enclosed by a ruled-and-lined concrete wall with a steel pedestrian gate hung on concrete posts. The rear yard is enclosed by a replacement red brick wall with an up-and-over garage door. No. 350 has group value as one of a terrace of four similar houses originally named Clonsilla, each with slight variations, together with the two further terraced dwellings attached at the north end, collectively forming a coherent and distinctive row on the Antrim Road.