11 Adelaide Park, Belfast, Bt9 6Fx

11 Adelaide Park is a large, impressive detached two-storey-with-attic red brick suburban villa in a broadly Queen Anne Revivalist and Arts and Crafts style. The original house was designed in 1892 by Belfast architect Francis Edward Ward, with a billiard room extension added in 1901 by Vincent Craig — two of the most prominent architects working in Belfast at the time, Craig being arguably the most accomplished house designer in Ulster during this period.

Setting

The property sits on the south side of the tree-lined Adelaide Park, approximately 2.5 kilometres south-west of Belfast city centre. It occupies a generous plot with a detached double garage to the east, a large square garden to the south, and a tarmac forecourt with a smaller garden to the north.

Plan and Form

The building is of asymmetric but broadly rectangular plan, with a wide, shallow projection to the north-facing front elevation and a more defined C-shaped projection to the south-east corner containing the kitchen and boiler room. The original 1892 house was a gable-ended square block with a large full-height gabled projection to the right (west) at the front and a recessed entrance bay to the left, with a balcony over. The 1901 extension to the west increased the building's volume by approximately half and is more complex in form, consisting of the turret and a lower two-storey section that is partly gabled and partly hipped, reducing to single-storey with attic to the rear. To the south-east is a single-storey hipped-roof kitchen projection.

Elevations

The front (north) elevation has a recessed bay to the left containing the entrance at ground floor level, sheltered beneath a balcony that is no longer in use following the removal of its timber balustrade. At the centre is a large full-height gabled bay with a canted bay window at ground floor. Next to this is the turret, with a lower recessed two-storey bay to the far right and a distinctive quarter-circle curved bay window at ground floor between these two sections. To the far left, the kitchen projection is fronted by a relatively tall wall with recessed arches and a parapet that obscures the roof; this wall appears to have been modified at some point.

The east elevation is the gable end of the main block, with the kitchen projection to the left set within an enclosed yard. The south (rear) elevation shows the single-storey-with-loft section of 1901 to the left, which was altered around 1950 and is now rendered on this side. The main original two-storey block sits at the centre with a projecting conservatory-like bay to the left and the main wall rising into two gables. The kitchen projection is to the far right. A raised terrace sits to the left. The west elevation shows a portion of the tower to the far left, a slightly lower two-storey section to the left and centre, and a single-storey-plus-loft section to the right, with the uppermost section of the main block rising above.

Walling

The walls are largely in Flemish bond red brick, except for the rendered section at the rear and the upper portions of the front and side gables, which are finished in painted roughcast with diagonal mock timber-framing to the larger front gable. There are moulded brick dripstones and aprons to some window openings, with stepped brick courses beneath the rendered portions of the gables. The front wall of the kitchen projection has two large arched recesses. The tower has an unusual undulating parapet with stone coping, rising above a moulded stone course with corner projections.

Roof

The original section has a relatively steep pitch, with marginally lower pitches to the front and rear gables, and an overhang with plain bargeboards. The extension gable has clipped eaves with a moulded brick eaves course. All sections are slated apart from the dome on the tower, which appears to be covered in lead and is believed once to have had a mushroom-shaped finial. Ridge tiles appear to be terracotta and carry small decorative finials. There is a flat-roofed dormer to the north-east on the original block and another to the south-west on the extension. Two large brick chimneystacks stand at either end of the rear slope of the main block's roof, with a slimmer stack between the main front gable and the tower. It is worth noting that in December 1894, shortly after the house's completion, a particularly violent storm blew down the chimneys, which helps explain the presence of bracing rods on each of the main stacks.

Windows and Doors

The majority of the openings appear to be original and are of various sizes, as one would expect in a property of this type. Some of the larger windows to the front and rear have segmental heads, but most are flat. Almost all have timber sash or double-sash frames with Georgian-style glazing bars to the upper sashes; the canted and curved bays to the front are entirely filled with such panes. The conservatory-like bay to the rear and the window frames to the single-storey section to its left are replacements of around 2000 in an Edwardian style; the dormer to that section also has a replacement frame, probably of mid-20th century date. The doorways and doors are largely original — Georgian glazing over panelling — although the door to the left at the rear is a modern replacement of around 2000. The open, flat-roofed timber entrance porch has slim square-section column supports rising from low brick walling, with lattice glazing incorporating an armorial to the side. The balustrades that originally enclosed the balcony over the entrance are missing.

The double garage immediately to the east of the house dates from around 1950 but is very much in keeping with the style of the main building, having a double-gabled overhanging slate roof, brick walls in stretcher bond, diagonal mock timber-framing to the gables, partly glazed timber folding doors, and plain timber bargeboards. An arched gate screen with a decorative wrought-iron gate spans between the kitchen section of the house and the garages.

Historical Background

Adelaide Park was one of three new streets off Lisburn Road approved for development by Belfast Corporation's Town Improvement Committee in November 1888. Like many of the new suburban thoroughfares created to accommodate the city's southward expansion during the mid-to-late Victorian period, it was laid out along one of the semi-rural lanes that had separated the long-established strip farms running from the high ground of the present Malone Road westwards to the Bog Meadows. The street was named after Adelaide Lodge, a gentrified pre-1830s farmhouse that once stood at the Malone Road end. The site was divided into thirty villa lots and terrace sites and auctioned by its owner, John Ritchie, in September 1890. Most plots were acquired by developer Robert John McConnell and built upon over the following decade, with the street largely taking its present form by 1900.

The original house at number 11 was built in 1892 to designs by Francis Edward Ward for McConnell and sold around 1893 to Charles C. Playfair (born around 1865), a native of Birmingham. He named the house Bon Accord, most likely in reference to the Aberdeen area where the Playfair family originated — Charles himself probably being a grandson of the noted early 19th century Aberdeen gunmaker of the same name, whose son (also named Charles Playfair) had moved to Birmingham to carry on the family business in the 1840s. Street directories from the late 1890s record Charles as a sporting goods manufacturer; by early 1901 he had become a Captain in the Royal Irish Rifles and was serving in South Africa. The 1901 census records Bon Accord as occupied by his wife Rosa, their two young daughters, and two domestic servants. Before leaving, Playfair had commissioned Vincent Craig to extend the house to the west of the main front gable. This work, carried out in 1901 by contractor Hutcheson Keith of Glenravel Street, originally contained a large billiard room at ground floor level with two rooms above.

In 1903, possibly due to the peripatetic nature of his army life, Charles Playfair sold the property — described at the time as a magnificently situated detached residence — to John Shirley Finnigan (born around 1872), a solicitor with offices in Lombard Street who was elected a town councillor in 1908. The 1911 census records John and his wife Adeline living here with their four children and a single domestic servant, with the building noted as a first-class dwelling with sixteen rooms in use by the family. The Finnigans sold Bon Accord around 1915 to William Thomas Doran (around 1847–1931), of Messrs Doran and Co., distillers, of Donegall Quay, who renamed the property Roselawn. Around 1934, Roselawn was acquired by H. Moore Brand, son of Thomas Brand, the founder of Brand's Stores (later Brands and Normans), then of Donegall Place, who also lived in Adelaide Park at the time. In late 1946 or early 1947 the house passed to Mrs Ellen Frances Jury and her husband Arthur Edward Jury, an architect and son of Percy Morgan Jury of the firm of Blackwood and Jury. Arthur Jury died around 1976 and his wife around 1995, after which the property passed to their son Charles Jury. It was sold to the present owners in 2020.

Alterations

Aside from the 1901 extension, several other changes have been made to the house over the years. The valuers' notebook of 1901 shows that the extension originally projected further to the rear, covering the area now forming the terrace, with this additional portion fronted by a canted bay, presumably a conservatory or sunroom. Map evidence indicates this was removed at some point between 1938 and 1957, with the garages added during the same period, replacing a smaller earlier structure. Internally, the most notable alteration has been the subdivision of the former billiard room; writing on the re-plastered walling in one of the rooms created by this division indicates it took place before 1968 and appears to have been carried out by Arthur Jury. Further alterations were made to the kitchen rooms in 2000, when the conservatory-like bay on that side and some adjacent window frames were replaced at the same time. Despite these changes, the original layout remains legible, and externally the building is largely intact, retaining almost all of its characteristically eclectic Edwardian features.