529 Antrim Road, Belfast, Co.Antrim, BT15 3BS

529 Antrim Road is a four-bay, two-storey with attic, mid-terrace late Victorian house built in 1879 in red brick with blue brick dressings. The architect is unknown. It forms part of a terrace of nine houses on the east side of Antrim Road between Glandore Gardens and Glandore Avenue, originally known as Castleton Terrace, and is one of three closely related houses at the southern end of that terrace sharing distinctive Ruskinian detailing around the doorcase and windows.

The building has a rectilinear plan with a shallow two-storey return and a later single-storey flat-roofed extension to the rear. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with projecting eaves, black clay angled ridge tiles, half-round uPVC guttering and circular downpipes. A rectangular chimney stack has a corbelled coping and red clay chimney pots. Dormer windows are built off the face of the wall, with moulded timber bargeboards on decorative brackets and timber finials. Modern roof lights are present to both front and rear.

The principal elevation faces west and is four bays wide with an asymmetric arrangement. The brickwork is laid in Flemish bond with blue brick banding at cill, impost and eaves level. Window openings on the ground and first floors are segmental-arched, with pairs of red and blue brick soldier courses forming the headers, topped by projecting hood moulds made up of alternating angular blue bricks. Windows throughout have painted projecting cills and one-over-one panes in double-hung timber sash frames. At the wallhead, two dormer windows have round-arched openings also with one-over-one double-hung timber sash windows. A two-storey canted bay sits to the south end of the elevation. Ground floor windows have been fitted with modern roller shutters with surface-mounted shutter boxes and guide rails.

The doorcase is particularly notable: a pointed arch opening flanked by colonnettes with floriated capitals, supported on a stepped plinth. The arch itself is formed in alternating bands of three red and blue brick soldier courses, with a painted moulded hood above and floriated label stops. The door is a square-headed timber panelled type with glazing to the upper panels, set beneath a pointed arch fanlight in which the number 529 is etched in gold. A single stone step leads up to the entrance.

The north and south elevations adjoin the neighbouring properties at 527 and 531 Antrim Road. The rear elevation is red brick with a two-storey shallow lean-to return and a more recent flat-roofed single-storey extension. To the rear, the walling is painted rendered brick with a square-headed door opening and a three-part narrow timber casement window. A narrow alley accessed from Glandore Gardens leads to the back of the property. The front is set behind a paved yard enclosed by tall modern railings.

The terrace stands in the townland of Skegoneill, which became one of the most affluent areas of Belfast from the mid-19th century as the city's shipbuilding, rope-making and textile industries expanded. Numbers 517 to 533 Antrim Road were built on the former grounds of Ashfield House, the home of solicitor Thomas McClelland, which was demolished around the turn of the 20th century. The terrace was constructed in three phases: the five Georgian-style houses at 519–527 Antrim Road were built in 1878, the three Gothic-style houses at 529–533 (of which this is one) followed in 1879, and 517 Antrim Road was added in 1883. The whole terrace was depicted on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–02, by which time the surrounding area had been comprehensively developed with terraced streets. The Antrim Road itself was originally laid out in 1830, and the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 shows that the land in this area remained predominantly rural as late as the 1850s.

The houses were built for John Smith, a local builder and contractor. The architect of numbers 529–533 is not known, though the adjoining houses at 519–527 are likely to have been designed by Redfern Kelly (1845–1928), a Belfast-based engineer who principally worked for the Belfast Harbour Commissioners. Number 529 was the largest of the three and was initially valued at £50. Its first recorded occupant was Edward O'Rourke Dickey, a local solicitor. By 1901 the house had passed to Captain D. Smith, a master mariner, and the 1911 census described it as a first-class dwelling of 19 rooms. The Smith family continued to live there until the 1950s. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) recorded the value at £52 and noted ownership had passed to McIntyre Bros. By the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) the occupant was a Ms Isabel Grieve and the valuation had fallen back to £50. The terrace was listed in 1987. In the 1990s the building was used as office premises before being converted to a restaurant in 1998. At the time of the second survey the restaurant signage remained in place but the building was vacant.

Despite the conversion to a restaurant and the detrimental addition of roller shutter boxes to the windows and timber decking at ground floor level, the building retains considerable architectural merit through its style, proportions, ornamentation and plan form, and holds important group value with the other listed buildings in the terrace.