2 Malone Hill Park, Belfast BT9 6RD

2 Malone Hill Park is a detached, storey-and-a-half Arts and Crafts style villa built around 1932 in brown brick with a steeply sloping Rosemary tiled roof. It stands on a large corner site where Malone Hill Park meets Malone Road in South Belfast, with a large side garden to the north-east and a large rear garden to the south-west. The architect is currently unknown.

The house was built for Thomas R. McKee, a partner in the Belfast building contractors McKee Bros of Donegall Road, who purchased the plot in 1931. The dwelling first appears in street directories in 1933 and on the large-scale Ordnance Survey map of 1938. Malone Hill Park was laid out in the late 1920s and all houses in the road were built within a ten-year period between 1928 and 1937; by 1938 the road was fully developed on both sides. At the time of the First General Revaluation of 1933 the house was valued at £40, had electric light and was centrally heated with approximately eight radiators, suggesting these radiators are likely original survivals.

A 1974 sales advertisement described the design as the "Sussex style of mellowed rustic brick", and the house clearly draws on the English vernacular styles that inspired the Arts and Crafts movement. It exhibits a high degree of asymmetry, decorative use of brick and tiles, an extended roofline, tall chimneys, and small-paned windows. It is notable, however, that Thomas McKee's daughter was given the middle name "Hoogendyk" — most likely her mother's maiden name — and this Dutch connection may account for the "Low Countries" character visible particularly in the end gable with its multiple windows.

The front elevation is asymmetrical, with overhanging eaves, an advanced stairwell bay, and an exposed chimney stack with darker brick diapering detail. Window openings vary in size but all retain their original leaded lights in metal frames set within painted timber surrounds. Two diminutive top-hung metal windows sit to either side of the chimney breast, each with unusual Rosemary tile edge headers. The original timber-panelled and glazed front door is intact, as is the triple garage door with leaded light top panels.

The side elevation facing Malone Road presents an asymmetric gambrel-profile gable with window openings of varying sizes but consistent proportions, all with timber surrounds. To the left is a wide arched opening with Rosemary-tiled voussoirs, leading to an open porch containing two timber-panelled doors and quarry tile flooring. The first floor has overhanging eaves, and stepped, stacked Rosemary-tiled corbels appear to each side of the gable. The opposite side elevation also has a gambrel-profile gable with large window openings centrally placed.

The rear elevation is likewise asymmetric, dominated by a large storey-and-a-half gable with stepped, stacked Rosemary-tiled corbels to each side. At ground floor level there is a bow window with a flat roof — the original plans showed this as a canted bay, the change most likely made during construction — and a large window opening above. A dormer window with a steep pitched roof and catslide extends to the right side. To the left is an open porch leading to living room doors and a store.

The garage is incorporated into the main body of the house and retains its original sliding door system using Henderson's "Tangent" door gear, manufactured by P C Henderson, a company established in 1921 and based in Barking, Essex, which remains in existence today. Henderson was a popular supplier of fittings for sliding garage doors during this period, when motor houses and garages were becoming an increasingly common feature of domestic dwellings.

Original plans for the house survive, though they are undated and unsigned. These show that the layout has been largely preserved as originally conceived. The principal interior change is the removal of a dividing wall and cupboards between the entrance hallway and the former maid's room overlooking the garden, creating a larger open-plan space. The staircase was also not constructed exactly as shown on the original plans. Fireplaces were provided to the living room and dining room, though the dining room fireplace has since been removed. The living room fireplace was made by Minsterstone of Somerset and is their "Dillington" model, a design that has been in manufacture for over a century, making it plausible that it is original to the house. Only one bedroom was originally fitted with a fireplace, reflecting the reliance on central heating from the outset.

In 1963 the contents of the house were sold and the property was subsequently acquired by Hugh McManus, a civil engineer, and his wife Irene. Both were directors of Liscon Developments Ltd, a company responsible for building thousands of houses in Belfast and across Northern Ireland during the 1960s and 1970s. The McManuses had travelled coast to coast in Canada studying house design and building techniques, and introduced features unusual in Northern Ireland at the time into the homes they developed, including central heating through hot air ducts, aluminium foil ceiling insulation, and carports. Hugh McManus later served as chairman of the House Builders Committee of the Federation of Building Trade Employers in the mid-1970s. In June 1968, designs were prepared for McManus by Mitchell McDade, an architect and artist from Newtownards known locally for his portraits, for an indoor swimming pool extension. This extension first appears on the large-scale Ordnance Survey map of 1982, alongside a glass-roofed carport added later. In 2022 the pool extension was converted into living accommodation to designs by McCartan Muldoon of Magherafelt.

A further chalet-style storey-and-a-half extension was constructed on the north side of the house approximately 2022–23, built in red brick with timber cladding and aluminium windows and doors.

The boundary treatment retains original matching brick entrance piers at the south-east end of the site — these have been taken down and rebuilt to widen the entrance — and a matching dwarf boundary wall with a timber fence above. An original cast metal number "2" remains on the right-hand pier. A new driveway entrance has been formed at the north side of the site onto Malone Hill Park. Mature boundary landscaping survives to the south side.

Wall construction is brown brick in stretcher bond. The roof is covered in original Rosemary tiles. All windows retain original leaded lights in metal frames within painted timber surrounds. Rainwater goods are painted metal.

The Arts and Crafts inspired design has given this house a distinctive character that sets it apart from the inter-war development of relatively modest middle-class houses that otherwise characterise this part of the Malone ridge. It represents a competent and complete exercise in suburban Arts and Crafts architecture, with particularly distinctive fenestration detailing to the gable fronting Malone Road.