98 Malone Road ('The Nook'), Belfast, Co Antrim, BT9 5HP

98 Malone Road ('The Nook'), Belfast

This is an unusual two-storey mews-style dwelling tucked between the rear gardens of two large houses on the east side of Malone Road, accessed from a shared driveway to the north. The building took its present external form in 1912, when outbuildings belonging to the two flanking properties — numbers 96 and 100 — were raised by a storey and converted to domestic use. The original outbuildings dated from 1875–76, constructed at the same time as number 96. Valuation records from the 1890s suggest that the section of the outbuildings belonging to number 96 already contained a dwelling of some kind before the 1912 conversion.

The front elevation, which faces north, is in a somewhat Edwardian Domestic Revival style and features gables, canted single-storey bays, mullioned and transomed windows with casement openings and small panes to the upper lights, and a painted roughcast finish. The remainder of the building is plain. The asymmetric frontage is not uniformly two storeys throughout: the far left section is fully two storeys and is topped with a hipped roof, containing a relatively large mullioned and transomed window, while the centre and right portions are more accurately described as one-and-a-half storeys, consisting of two large gabled half-dormers, each with a window in the same mullioned and transomed style. A large section of the centre of the façade is covered in ivy. The roof overall is a mixture of hipped and gabled sections, all slated. There appear to be two rendered chimneystacks to the north side, and the rainwater goods appear to be mainly cast iron. To the west side, and belonging to the south-west flat, there are three Velux windows, with some also to the east side.

Roughly at the centre of the ground floor is a probably original panelled and glazed door set into a shallow recess, giving access to the ground floor flat. To its immediate left is a mullioned and transomed window. Further left is a single-storey canted bay, completely glazed in the same mullioned and transomed manner and covered by a slated hipped roof. To the left of that is a door leading into a narrow passage through which the upper floor flat is accessed. To the right of the ground floor entrance is another single-storey bay of the same form. Further right, the façade merges with a high wall containing a large carriage entrance leading to the rear yard of number 96; the south-west flat is also accessed from this point.

The passage to the left of the front elevation leads through to a small yard. The yard is bounded to the east by the west wall of the rear return of number 100, to the south by the north wall of a summerhouse belonging to number 100, and to the north and west by the building itself. To the north side of the yard there is a recessed area containing, on the east-facing wall, a doorway leading directly to a staircase up to the upper floor flat, and to the right of this a high-level squat window with a modern frame. Above the recess is a balcony with decorative iron railings, overlooked by a modern window to the north on the south-facing wall, and a glazed door and small window with modern frames to the west on the east-facing wall. On the east-facing wall to the west side of the yard itself, there is a large window with a modern frame at ground floor level with a modern glazed door to its right, and at first floor level two large windows and a much smaller, narrower window to the far right, all with modern frames. The walls enclosing the yard are finished in plain render and the yard is paved, with a large tree growing from its centre.

The west elevation faces into the rear yard of number 96 and is in painted brick. The left half of the elevation is blank. To the right is a large flat-arched garage entrance belonging to number 96, fitted with what appear to be early 20th century timber doors glazed to the upper third. To the left of this is a doorway giving access to the south-west flat, which appears to be located mainly on the upper floor and is likely associated with the right-hand half-dormer at the front. At upper floor level on this elevation there are two windows with modern frames, and between them a partly glazed door opening that now appears to serve as a window.

To the south, the building merges with what was originally an outbuilding belonging to the now-demolished former number 102. This section has also been converted to flats, containing two units, and while structurally part of this building, it originated as a separate outbuilding. This conversion appears to have taken place in the 1990s, when number 102 itself was demolished.

The building was known as 'The Nook' from at least the time of its 1912 conversion and remained in single domestic use until 1968, when it was divided into two flats, one to each floor. A further flat was created at the south-west end in the 1970s. The property sits within a conservation area.

The earliest recorded resident of The Nook appears to have been a William Redmond, a policeman who was posted to Dublin in 1919 and was subsequently killed during the War of Independence. He was depicted in the 1997 film Michael Collins, in which he was played by actor Ian McIlhinney, though some historical licence was taken with the circumstances of his death — in the film he is killed in a bomb blast rather than shot.