Cloona House, 30-31 Colin Road, Dunmurray, Belfast, BT17 0LG

Cloona House is a substantial mid-Victorian gentleman's residence built in 1868–69 for Nicholas William Grimshaw, a mill-owner whose family had been prominent in the development of the textile industry in the Belfast area since the late 18th century. The identity of the architect is not known, although the design is reminiscent of the work of Thomas Jackson. The building is now in private ownership and used as offices, having previously served as a community centre. It stands on gently sloping ground to the east of Colin Road, approximately 6.8km south-west of Belfast town centre and 6.4km north of the centre of Lisburn, set within what is now a relatively densely packed modern housing development with business units to the west. A not insubstantial section of the original grounds has been retained to the south of the building, with a car park to the immediate west. The site is accessed from a curving public road — the original drive — which leads to a recently constructed gateway to the south-east of the building.

The house is designed in a typical mid-Victorian Italianate fashion and is well-proportioned and two storeys in height. The walls are finished in red clay facing brick resting on a bevelled, rock-faced sandstone plinth. Quoins and the string course set between the floors are dressed sandstone, while the eaves course is rendered. The relatively shallow-pitched hipped roof is covered in natural slate with dark grey clay ridge tiles. To the east, south and west the roof overhangs and is supported on brackets; to the north the eaves are clipped with a canted brick eaves course. The gutters are cast-iron with an ogee profile, as are the circular downspouts. Several chimneystacks have survived; these are relatively tall, constructed in red brick with a straw-coloured brick string course, rendered base, sandstone caps and clay pots.

The footprint of the core of the house is approximately rectangular. Projecting from the centre of the front (south) elevation is a single-storey flat-roofed porch topped with a projecting sandstone cornice and with window openings to each cheek. At the southern end of both the east and west elevations there is a full-height hipped-roof canted bay, and at the north end of the east elevation there is a broad full-height hipped-roof square bay. To the rear (north) are two returns: a short two-storey one to the east and a longer part two-storey, part three-storey one to the west. The two- and three-storey sections of the west elevation rise to a common eaves line. The roofs of the canted bays have lead ridges. There is a yard to the rear enclosed by a tall brick wall, within which are several single-storey extensions.

The front façade is symmetrical. A short flight of cut sandstone steps rises to a platform in front of the main entrance, with a modern wheelchair ramp rising to the left side of the platform. The main entrance is set within a semicircular-headed recess on the front face of the porch. A sandstone keystone is embossed with the decorative monogram 'W C. G' — presumably standing for William Grimshaw. The timber door has fielded panels and is surmounted by a plain semicircular fanlight framed with a cut sandstone surround. Either side of the porch there are two window openings at ground floor level, and five evenly arranged openings at first floor level.

Window openings throughout are mainly flat-headed with flat brick arches. Ground floor openings rest on the bevelled plinth, while first floor openings have cut sandstone sills. Reveals are plain and frames are timber sash, mainly two-over-two with vertical glazing bars. To the rear there is a large semicircular-arched window opening to the stairwell, fitted with a two-over-one timber sash frame with margin panes. To the right-hand side of the west façade, the two-storey canted bay has windows to each facet on both floors; the window to the centre of the ground floor of the bay has been converted to a doorway. To the left of the bay there are four fairly evenly spaced window openings to both ground and first floors. On the left side of the west façade, where it merges with the three-storey rear return, openings are flat-headed — one to each floor — but the ground floor opening has been converted to a doorway fitted with a modern multi-paned timber glazed door, while those to the upper floors have side-hung timber frames. The east façade has the two-storey canted bay to its left, matching that on the west, and the broad square bay to its right, with two window openings to each floor in each bay and two further window openings to each floor set between the bays, all evenly distributed. The rear elevation comprises the rear face of the main house together with the various faces of the rear returns and single-storey extensions. With the exception of the semicircular-arched stairwell window described above, all openings here are flat-headed; the majority have retained their timber sash frames, though a small number have been replaced with casement or top-hung frames.

Within the rear yard are four small single-storey extensions. The first is set to the east side of the western return and has two small additions, one to its south side and one to its east. The space between the two main returns is built over, half with a flat-roofed extension and half with a corrugated Perspex roof. On the eastern side of the western return there is a recent steel fire escape. The yard is paved and contains a number of oil tanks.

The building has retained much of its original appearance externally, as well as much of its internal layout and a substantial amount of original good-quality detailing, although some alterations have detracted from the building.

The house has a notable history. The Grimshaw family continued to live at Cloona until 1888, when it was leased to Alfred Jaffe, a linen merchant and the elder brother of Sir Otto Jaffe, later Lord Mayor of Belfast. In 1898 William Augustus Ferran leased the property and subsequently acquired the freehold. After Ferran's death in 1930 Cloona passed to his wife Isabella, who sold it the following year to William Henry of the York Street Flax Spinning Mill. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Henry leased Cloona to the War Department (the Ministry of Defence), and the house became the home of the General Officer Commanding the forces in Northern Ireland. It continued to serve this role throughout much of the Troubles, with Operation Motorman among other things being planned there. In 1981 the Ministry of Defence, who by that stage owned the building outright, sold the property to the local Roman Catholic parish, who converted it to a community centre.

The house was also the birthplace of Beatrice Ethel Grimshaw (1870–1953), a noted early 20th century travel writer and novelist with a particular interest in the South Pacific islands. In an area that has been given over to particularly dense housing development in recent years, Cloona House is a rare 19th century survivor and stands out as a building of substantial architectural and historic interest.