99 Upper Newtownards Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT4 3HW

99 Upper Newtownards Road is a two-storey semi-detached house built in approximately 1877, attributed to Young & Mackenzie, described by the Dictionary of Irish Architects as the most successful architectural practice in Belfast, the leading architects for the Presbyterian Church in the North East, and recipients of some of the most important commercial commissions in the city. The house is constructed from rock-faced, random-coursed Scrabo sandstone and forms one of a group of two pairs of semi-detached houses — the others being 2, 4, and 6 Cyprus Avenue — originally known as Plevna Villas, set on a large site between Cyprus Avenue, Beersbridge Road, and Upper Newtownards Road in the townland of Ballyhackamore, Belfast.

The plan form is L-shaped, with a two-storey hipped-roof canted bay to the front. The roof is covered in natural slate to the front, with angled black-clay ridge tiles and projecting eaves. Rainwater goods are uPVC ogee guttering discharging to circular downpipes. There are two rectangular-section rendered chimney stacks and one shared chimney stack, all with corbelled coping and red-clay chimney pots. The sandstone walling includes a chamfered plinth course. Window openings are square-headed with flat-arch lintels and painted cills. The original windows are double-hung timber sashes: 2-over-1 pane to the ground floor and 4-over-1 pane to the first floor, the latter with ogee horns.

The principal (west) elevation is divided into three sections: a bay to the south with two ground-floor windows and one first-floor window; a projecting three-sided canted bay immediately to the north with window openings at both floors; and a recessed bay at the north end containing a square-headed door opening with a chamfered stone surround and a replacement timber panelled door with a four-pane fanlight. The north elevation shows the side of the canted bay to the west with window openings at both floors, and a two-bay shallow projecting gable with a decorative timber bargeboard to the projecting bracketed verge. A single bay to the east has a monopitch roof extending down from the main roofline in a cat-slide form, abutted at the east end by a single-storey flat-roofed modern extension fitted with a uPVC casement window. The rear east elevation was not accessible at the time of survey but appears to include a large modern two-storey hipped-roof extension to the north-east and a modern flat-roofed extension to the south-east. The south elevation is abutted by 2 Cyprus Avenue.

To the rear of the main roof, artificial slate and other modern roofing materials have been used.

The setting includes a gravelled driveway and a large lawned garden to the north and west, enclosed by hedging and timber fencing, with a painted metal gate to the north. To the north-west stands an original rectangular carport with a pitched slated roof, boarded timber walling, timber soffit and bargeboards, a timber panelled door, and timber windows; its north and west elevations are obscured by vegetation.

The house was built for the Bloomfield Land and Building Company Ltd, formed in 1874 by the landowning Boyd family to develop leases in the East Belfast townlands of Ballyhackamore and Ballycloughan. Annual Revision records confirm that the four Plevna Villas had been erected by 1878, and Young & Mackenzie's own papers record that the firm designed four villas in the Bloomfield area in 1877, with construction carried out by the builder J. Smyth and Son. The following year, Young & Mackenzie also designed a terrace of cottages at 364–374 Beersbridge Road for the same company. The architectural style and materials of Plevna Villas closely resemble that Beersbridge Road group, though the Cyprus Avenue pairs are significantly larger and incorporate a more complex plan form with the two-storey canted bay.

In 1858, the second edition Ordnance Survey map recorded Ballyhackamore as predominantly rural, occupied by only a small number of gentlemen's manors including Bloomfield House and Greenville House. By the 1870s, the industrial expansion of Belfast and the development of the Belfast and County Down Railway had prompted the construction of new streets and housing in the townland. An Annual Revisions plan dating from approximately 1878 depicted Plevna Villas in their current layout, suggesting no significant alterations to the original design were made during the late Victorian period, though a flat-roofed extension was added to the rear of No. 99 in approximately 1987.

The valuer's 1878 entry set the total rateable value of No. 99 at £27 and recorded that it was first occupied by Edward Van Brabant, a local linen merchant with the Ulster Damask and Linen Company on Lindsay Street. By 1901 the house was occupied by John Jones, a soap manufacturer, and the census building return for that year described it as a first-class dwelling of ten rooms. Ownership of Plevna Villas passed in approximately 1900 to the Irish mathematician William McFadden Orr (1866–1934), who was born in Comber, County Down, and held the post of Professor of Mathematics at the Royal College of Science, Dublin from 1891 to 1933. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value of No. 99 was increased to £52, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) it had been further increased to £53. Occupants continued to change from the 1930s until the 1970s, when an E. S. Lory was recorded as occupant.

The house lies within a conservation area and has group value with its three neighbouring villas, with which it makes a positive contribution to the character of the local area.