32 Windsor Park, Belfast, BT9 6FQ

No. 32 Windsor Park is a substantial semi-detached, two-storey, three-bay house with a full attic, built around 1894 to designs by the architect William Batt. Originally named 'Mingala', it faces south onto Windsor Park, a tree-lined street running east to west between the Lisburn and Malone Roads, two main arterial routes south of Belfast city centre. The house forms a mirror image with its neighbour No. 30 ('Colonsa') to the west, the two together reading as a single, comprehensive and distinctive design. It also has group value with the terrace at Nos. 22–28 and the detached house at No. 34 ('St. Margaret's'), all of which are contemporary and share similar stylistic devices. Together they make a striking contribution to the Derryvolgie and Windsor Conservation Area, eclectic in style and confident in execution.

The house is built in red brick in English Garden Wall bond, with decorative sandstone, terracotta and brick detailing. The roof is natural slate with a platform ridge and is served by cast iron ogee gutters. Four brick chimneys with pots rise from the roof, two of which are shared with No. 30. The plan is almost square, with a lower rear return.

The south-facing front elevation onto Windsor Park is asymmetrical. At ground floor level, a central timber panelled door with a semi-circular fanlight is flanked by grey marble columns on brick plinths, with moulded capitals comprising scrolls and grapes; the left-hand capital incorporates a female head, and the right-hand one a male head. The door sits within a semi-circular arched opening with a keystone, all executed in terracotta and sandstone. To the right of the door is a single-storey canted bay with three windows, topped by a decorative brick corbelled parapet with a lead roof. To the left is a three-storey square bay with two windows. At first floor level, windows are paired on either side of a single central window. On the east side (right), the attic is expressed as a large gable with decorative strapwork and a finial, aligned with the bay below and containing two windows at eaves level. On the west side (left), the square bay tapers beneath the eaves cornice to form a square dormer with a hipped roof and finial, containing one window. The façade is heavily enriched throughout with moulded and decorative string courses, chamfered brick to all openings, terracotta window heads and decorative window aprons. Of particular note is the heavy eaves cornice, and immediately beneath it, a continuous line of square terracotta plaques bearing daisy-like flowers.

The west side elevation, which faces onto the driveway to the rear, is relatively plain, with one window at the southern end lighting the ground floor. The decorative string courses and eaves detailing match those of the front.

The north rear elevation shows the main rear wall abutted centrally by a three-storey gabled return. To the east of the return the rear wall is expressed as a two-storey bay, surmounted — as on the front elevation — by a large gabled attic containing a pair of windows, with one window each to the ground and first floors. To the west of the return, the rear wall extends above the eaves to form a rectangular attic dormer adjoined to the corresponding feature at No. 30, each side lit by one window, with two windows to the first floor. The original side passage has been enclosed and glazed over with a modern extension, obscuring the ground floor at this point; the original ground floor window at this location has been altered to form a door opening into a small outdoor space between the original house and the extension. Abutting the end of the return is a small single-storey brick outhouse. The return itself has one window to each floor on both its north and east faces. A small single-storey brick lean-to abuts the east side of the return against the rear wall of the house; although its appearance is modern, its brickwork detailing — including a corbelled plinth — suggests it is contemporary with the main house. There is no ornamental detailing to the rear elevation.

Windows throughout are painted timber single-glazed sliding sashes with 1/1 panes, and are largely original. The overall external fabric, with the exception of the minor rear modifications described above, is substantially as built.

Despite the building's subdivision into two apartments, the original fabric and interior detailing at ground floor level remain substantially intact.

The house is set back from the tree-lined street, with mature hedging and trees to the front garden. The curved, bull-nosed stone steps to the front entrance are likely original, and the rear garden is mainly grassed with planting and trees.

Windsor Park — originally 'Windsor Park Avenue' — was laid out around 1873, its line following a path that had previously run through a large nursery belonging to 'Laurel Bank' (later renamed 'Bellevue'), a house that stood close to the Malone Road to the east. Laurel Bank was itself built around 1835 within one of the long-established strip farms that originally stretched from the high ground of the Malone Ridge westwards to the Bog Meadows. Many of these farms were converted into small semi-rural demesnes in the mid-19th century and were in turn broken up by the more intensive suburban expansion that gradually spread southwards along the Malone Ridge in the late Victorian era. A large number of the streets created in the later 19th century followed the boundaries of these former farms and demesnes; in the case of Windsor Park, it is the northern and southern boundaries of the building plots on either side of the street that mark the limits of the older property. The earliest houses along the new street were developed from 1873 onwards — No. 33 in that year, Nos. 42–44 in 1874 and Nos. 11–13 a year later, all since demolished. Much of the southern side of the street was developed over the following two decades, but land to the north was retained as a nursery until the mid-1890s, when it too began to be built upon with a mixture of large detached, semi-detached and terraced dwellings.

No. 32, along with the attached No. 30 and the nearby detached No. 34, was built in 1893–94 to designs by William Batt for James Hetherington, a linen manufacturer of the Broadway Damask Company, who himself lived in 'Canmore' (since demolished) on the opposite side of Windsor Park. The contractor was Messrs. J. and W. Stewart of Belfast. Building materials for this 'superior villa', including the terracotta panels in the frieze and the upper keystones, were supplied by the Annadale Brick Company.

The earliest available street directory, dating from 1895, records Robert Agnew, a local government inspector, as the occupant. In the 1901 census, Agnew was living there with his grown-up daughter Catherine and two domestic servants, the house being noted as a first-class dwelling with 13 rooms in use. John Corbett of Brown, Corbett & Co. was in residence by 1907, followed in 1910 by the Reverend David Taylor, Commissioner of National Education, Presbyterian minister, and Honorary Secretary of the Presbyterian Orphan Society. The 1911 census records Reverend Taylor occupying the house with his wife Dora, their three grown-up children and two domestic servants. The Taylors vacated the property around 1920, and William Mitchell, a seed merchant, is recorded as householder in 1924, remaining until the later 1930s. By 1943, James T. Bryson was in residence, and was still there in 1951. At some point later in that decade the property was divided into two flats; by 1960 the ground floor flat was occupied by Mrs. Susan McShane and the upper flat by W. R. Morrow. Subsequent occupants of the ground floor flat included Miss Valerie Smyth (from 1965), A. V. Cramsie (from around 1972), D. G. M. Clarke (before 1980) and Valerie Burns (by 1990). The upper flat passed to H. R. Hicks by 1970, then to J. Reid around 1977, and to Cormac Reilly by 1990, who remained there until at least 1995.