53 Park Road, BELFAST, County Antrim, BT7 2FX

This is a detached two-storey house with attic, built in 1915, of considerable architectural and historic interest. The building is Grade B2 listed.

The house is constructed of brick and rendered pebbledash walling with redbrick quoins, a redbrick plinth course, and a continuous moulded redbrick string course between floors. It is square on plan, facing north, and situated on the south side of Park Road within its own small plot. The pitched natural slate roof features roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles and terracotta finials, with a central redbrick chimneystack topped with terracotta pots. The original ogee-moulded cast-iron guttering sits above decorative moulded redbrick eaves, which continue as a raking cornice to either gable end; plastic downpipes have been added more recently.

The symmetrical two-bay front elevation is dominated by a pair of two-storey three-sided canted bay windows with segmental-headed openings at ground floor level, fitted with original 6/1 timber sash windows having ogee horns and continuous sandstone sills. The first floor has timber casement windows set in timber frames with 6-pane overlights, surmounted by decorative timber cornices to moulded metal guttering. A square-headed attic window contains a 6/1 timber sash window, with a further off-centre square-headed first floor opening containing paired timber sash windows. The east gable is abutted by a modern hardwood entrance porch with hipped natural slate roof and replacement timber panelled door. The rear elevation is abutted by a gable-ended two-storey rendered return with redbrick quoins and chimneystack. The west gable contains several square-headed window openings with 6/1 timber sash windows and two segmental-headed ground floor openings with replacement timber casement windows.

Modern redbrick extensions were added around 2000, and the house has been fitted with elaborate panelling originally designed for the Britannic liner, a sister ship to the Titanic, which was inserted around 1922. The Britannic was the third and last of the Olympic-class liners, launched in early 1914 by Harland and Wolff. When the Titanic sank, the Britannic's outfitting was incomplete. Following the outbreak of the First World War, she was requisitioned as a hospital ship and hurriedly altered internally, spending most of her operational life ferrying casualties from Italy to Southampton. She was struck by a mine or torpedo in November 1916 and sank. The panelling at this house was likely removed or never fitted after the ship's requisition in 1915, and architect's drawings suggest it was installed here in 1922.

The house was built by Thomas Thornbury of Thomas Thornbury and Co, contractors, who moved into the property himself. It was christened 'Rusinurbe', meaning 'country in the city', and first appears in valuation records in 1915 as a newly-built vacant house valued at £39. At the time of its construction, the surrounding area was relatively undisturbed, with Ormeau and Ravenhill roads not yet functioning as main arterial routes for motorised traffic. The Thornbury family occupied the house until at least 1931, with subsequent occupiers including Joseph Lowry McGowan, director of Concrete Piling Ltd, and F Allen, an incorporated accountant, who remained resident until at least 1950.

The house is situated on the south side of Park Road on its own modest plot, forming part of a variety of early twentieth-century dwellings and surrounded by mature trees. This area borders the southern edge of Ormeau Park and was developed over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Park Road was the last of three residential roads—including North Parade and South Parade—connecting Ormeau and Ravenhill Roads, laid out subsequent to the construction of Cooke Centenary Church in the early 1890s.