2 Cyprus Avenue, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT5 5NT

2 Cyprus Avenue is a two-storey semi-detached house built in approximately 1877, attributed to Young & Mackenzie, widely regarded at the time as the most successful architectural practice in Belfast and the leading architects for the Presbyterian Church in the north-east of Ireland, who also received some of the most important commercial commissions in the city. The house is constructed in rock-faced, random-coursed Scrabo sandstone and forms one of a group of four late-Victorian villas — the others being 4 Cyprus Avenue, 6 Cyprus Avenue, and 99 Upper Newtownards Road — occupying a large site between Cyprus Avenue, Beersbridge Road, and Upper Newtownards Road in the townland of Ballyhackamore, east Belfast. The group was originally known as Plevna Villas.

The plan is L-shaped, with a two-storey hipped-roof canted bay to the front. The roof is covered in natural slate with angled black clay ridge tiles and projecting eaves, and rainwater is carried by uPVC ogee guttering discharging to circular downpipes. There are two rectangular rendered chimney stacks and one shared chimney stack, all with corbelled coping and clay chimney pots. The walling includes a chamfered plinth course throughout.

Window openings are square-headed with flat-arch lintels and painted cills. The original double-hung timber sash windows are retained: 2-over-1 sashes to the ground floor and 4-over-1 sashes to the first floor, the latter with ogee horns.

The principal elevation faces west and is composed of three bays: a southern bay containing the entrance doorway — which has a chamfered stone surround, a glazed painted timber door with a decorative metal screen, and a four-pane fanlight over — a projecting three-sided canted bay immediately to the north, and a recessed bay at the north end with two ground-floor windows and one first-floor window. The south elevation shows the side of the canted bay (with window openings at both ground and first floor), a two-bay gabled projection, and a single bay to the east with a catslide roof extending down from the main roofline, abutted by a single-storey flat-roofed modern extension fitted with a uPVC casement window. The rear east elevation, though not directly accessed during inspection, appears to have several modern flat-roofed and lean-to extensions added to the original building. The north elevation is shared with 99 Upper Newtownards Road.

The house is set back from Cyprus Avenue behind a gravelled driveway, with a large lawned garden to the south and west enclosed by a hedge. Access is through a painted cast-iron gate supported on metal standards.

The villas were built for the Bloomfield Land and Building Company Limited, formed in 1874 by the landowning Boyd family to develop leases for building projects in the east Belfast townlands of Ballyhackamore and Ballycloughan. The mid-19th-century Ordnance Survey map records 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 brought new streets and housing to the area. Annual Revision records confirm that the four villas had been erected by 1878, and a surviving plan from approximately that year shows the buildings in their current layout, indicating that few significant alterations have been made to the original design since the late-Victorian period. The single-storey flat-roofed rear extensions were installed after 1987. Young & Mackenzie's own papers record that the firm designed four villas in the Bloomfield area in 1877, and that the builder contracted to carry out the construction was J. Smyth and Son. The following year, Young & Mackenzie also designed a terrace of cottages on Beersbridge Road for the same client — Nos. 364–374 Beersbridge Road — which share a similar architectural style and materials with the Cyprus Avenue group, though the Cyprus Avenue houses are significantly larger and have a more complex plan form incorporating the two-storey canted bay.

At the time of its first valuation in 1878, No. 2 was recorded as occupied by a Mr James Breach, a local gentleman, with a rateable value of £27. By 1901 the occupant was William H. Moore, an engine works manager, and the census building return of that year described the house as a first-class dwelling of eight rooms. Around 1900, ownership of Plevna Villas passed from the Bloomfield Land and Building Company 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 between 1891 and 1933. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (covering 1936–57), the rateable value of No. 2 was increased to £58. Around 1920, Charles Taggart, a local draper, took possession of the house; after his death in 1945 his family continued to reside on Cyprus Avenue until at least the 1970s. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the rateable value had risen to £62.

The house lies within a conservation area and contributes positively to the character of the local streetscape, both individually and as part of the group of four Plevna Villas.