348 Antrim Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT15 5AE

348 Antrim Road is a mid-terrace, two-bay, two-storey with attic former house built in red brick around 1877 to designs by the Belfast architectural partnership Young and Mackenzie. It is now subdivided into five apartments and forms part of a coherent and distinctive row of seven similar terraced houses on the west side of Antrim Road in the townland of Skegoneill.

The building is rectilinear on plan with an enclosed front garden to the east and a rear yard. The pitched roof is covered in artificial slates with synthetic ridge tiles, lead valleys, and uPVC rainwater goods fixed to a timber box fascia with decorative timber brackets. A profiled and corbelled red brick chimney stack with clay pots rises from the north party wall.

The main walling is red brick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing, moulded red brick string courses, and painted flush sandstone ashlar dressings throughout. A rock-faced uncoursed squared sandstone plinth course runs along the base with a chamfered ashlar sandstone trim. Window openings are square-headed, fitted with uPVC windows, and have painted sandstone ashlar cills and flush lintels with bowtel mouldings.

The principal east-facing front elevation is the most architecturally distinctive part of the building. A canted full-height bay window to the left rises to attic level, where it becomes a rectangular half-timbered gabled oriel window — a Tudoresque feature that gives the terrace much of its character. The oriel is fitted with a uPVC window, supported by decorative moulded and curved timber brackets at eaves level, with timber sheeting to the underside and a timber bargeboard. To the right of the bay is the shouldered principal entrance, framed by a painted sandstone ashlar lintel bearing foliate and floral carvings. The door itself is a replacement timber panelled door with a plain fanlight, approached by three replacement nosed concrete steps and an original flagstone paved footpath.

The south side elevation is abutted by the adjoining No. 346, and the north side elevation is abutted by No. 350. The rear west elevation is pebbledash rendered and features a two-storey red brick return to the left and a three-storey stair return to the right, both built around 1990 as part of the conversion to flats, with uPVC windows throughout.

The front garden is enclosed by a replacement concrete plinth wall and steel railing, with a steel pedestrian gate hung on replacement red brick pillars. The rear yard is enclosed by a replacement tall red brick wall, with a bitmac shared alleyway opening onto Hopefield Avenue.

Some alterations detract from the building's character, specifically the demolition of the original outhouses, the introduction of uPVC windows throughout, the application of dry-dash render, the construction of the new rear return, and the use of fibre cement roof slates. Nevertheless, the retained sandstone dressings, the Tudoresque half-timbered gable, and the original brickwork continue to define the character of the front elevation, and some historic interior detail survives.

The building is one of a group of four similar houses in the terrace originally known as Clonsilla — the others being Nos. 344, 346, and 350 — each with slight variations, with a further two terraced dwellings attached at the north end that together form the wider coherent row at Nos. 344–354 Antrim Road.

The Antrim Road was originally laid out in 1830. By the 1850s, as recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, the land to the north of the Belfast Waterworks and the Limestone Road remained predominantly rural. As Belfast's population expanded and its shipbuilding, rope-making, and textile industries grew through the mid-19th century, a number of gentlemen's mansions and wealthy merchants' houses were established in Skegoneill, which swiftly became one of the most affluent areas of the city. Nos. 344–354 Antrim Road were built on the grounds of Hopefield House, a two-storey six-bay mansion previously occupied by the Sinclair family. The majority of those grounds were built over during the 1870s; Nos. 416–428 Antrim Road were constructed on the same parcel of land in 1872.

The four houses of Clonsilla (Nos. 344–350) were built for Andrew Wright, a local pawnbroker and clerk at the Belfast Loan Office at Nos. 49–51 Ann Street, who himself resided at No. 3 Cranston Place. The architects, Young and Mackenzie, were a partnership formed between Robert Young and John Mackenzie around 1867. The Dictionary of Irish Architects describes the firm as "the leading architects for the Presbyterian Church in the North-East" who also received some of the most important commercial commissions in the city. The firm designed a large number of contemporary terraces throughout Belfast during the Victorian period. The adjoining Nos. 352–354 Antrim Road were added in 1899 in a similar style, and the completed terrace appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–02, by which time the surrounding area had been fully developed with terraced streets.

The Annual Revisions set the total rateable value of No. 348 at £37 in 1877. The first recorded occupant was a Major Thomas Bryson; by 1901 the property was occupied by a Mr. John Riordan. The 1911 Census records the tenant as Richard Stephen Grainger, an official Assignee in the Belfast Local Bankruptcy Court. At that time the building was classified as a first-class dwelling comprising 13 rooms with a coal house as its sole outbuilding. By the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (covering 1936–57), the rateable value had risen to £46, and ownership of the entire terrace had by the 1930s passed to a Mr. Francis Curley. The Condy family occupied No. 348 from the 1930s to the 1950s, after which ownership passed to a Mr. H. Crawford. By the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72), the building remained in use as a private dwelling with a rateable value of £47. The terrace was listed in 1987, and Nos. 346–348 were converted into self-contained apartments by around 1990.