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

344 Antrim Road is a former end-of-terrace house built around 1877 to designs by the Belfast architectural partnership Young & Mackenzie. It is a two-bay, two-storey building with an attic storey, constructed in red brick and terminating the southern end of a terrace of four similar houses on the west side of Antrim Road. The building is rectilinear on plan, with its gabled south side elevation fronting onto Hopefield Avenue. Around 2000 the property was extensively refurbished and subdivided into approximately seven units, at which point a replacement two-storey red brick return was added to the rear.

The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, lead valleys, and uPVC rainwater goods to a timber box fascia with decorative timber brackets. A tall, profiled and corbelled red brick chimney stack with clay pots rises from an external chimney breast on the south gable. The walls are laid in Flemish bond red brick with cement pointing, moulded red brick string courses, and painted flush sandstone ashlar dressings. A rock-faced uncoursed squared sandstone plinth course runs along the base with a chamfered sandstone trim, both of which have been painted.

Window openings are square-headed and contain original single-pane timber sash windows with ogee horns, painted sandstone ashlar cills, and flush lintels with bowtel mouldings.

On the main east-facing front elevation, a canted bay window to the left rises to attic level, where it becomes a rectangular gabled oriel window. This bay was designed as a half-timbered feature, though the timbers have largely been replaced with steel. It contains a tripartite arrangement of single-pane timber sash windows, with decorative moulded and curved timber brackets supporting projecting eaves, timber sheeting to the underside, and a timber bargeboard. To the right of the bay is the principal entrance, which has a shouldered opening with a painted sandstone ashlar lintel carved with foliate and floral decoration. The door itself is a replacement timber panelled door, with a plain fanlight above and two nosed sandstone steps below. Sandstone walling sits to the left of the entrance, with a concrete paved footpath leading to it.

The gabled south side elevation features a two-storey canted bay window to the left, with a flat roof and a moulded red brick parapet wall. The right-hand side of this elevation is largely dominated by the slightly advanced red brick chimney stack, which corbels out at first-floor level to align with the chimney top, where it also corbels to support a sandstone cap and three circular pots. At attic level there is a pair of asymmetrically placed round-headed window openings formed in brick headers, each containing single-pane timber sash windows. A central door opening is a later insertion of around 2000, fitted with a timber panelled door, a painted cement rendered surround, and two concrete steps opening into a paved area.

The west rear elevation is blank and is abutted by the two-storey red brick return added around 2000, which has square-headed window openings at ground floor and round-headed window openings at first floor, all with timber sash windows. The moulded brick string course from the south elevation returns to the point on the west elevation where the new extension begins. A slightly advanced brick bay, possibly a former chimney stack, also remains on this elevation. The north elevation is abutted by the adjoining building at number 346.

The building sits set back from Antrim Road behind a gravel front garden enclosed by a replacement concrete plinth wall and modern steel railing. A steel pedestrian gate is hung on replacement red brick pillars with salvaged terracotta capstones. A cobble-lock parking area lies to the south side, and a shared bitmac rear alleyway opens onto Hopefield Avenue.

Although the demolition of the original outhouses, the replacement return, the replacement front door, and the replacement railings all detract from the building's historic character, the original roof slates, timber sash windows, sandstone dressings, Tudoresque half-timbered gable, and tall corbelled chimney stack together contribute significantly to its overall character and appearance.

Number 344 is one of four similar houses in a row originally known as Clonsilla, each with slight variations from the others (the remaining three are listed separately). Two further terraced dwellings of similar height and width abut the opposite, northern end of the terrace, and together all six buildings form a coherent and distinctive group on the 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 Limestone Road remained predominantly rural. As Belfast's population grew through the expansion of the shipbuilding, rope-making, and textiles industries, a number of gentlemen's mansions and wealthy merchants' houses were built in the townland of Skegoneill, which swiftly became one of the most affluent areas in the city. Numbers 344 to 354 Antrim Road were built on the grounds of Hopefield House, a two-storey six-bay mansion previously occupied by the Sinclair family, most of whose grounds were built over during the 1870s.

The four houses now numbered 344 to 350 were constructed for Andrew Wright, a local pawnbroker and clerk at the Belfast Loan Office at numbers 49 to 51 Ann Street, who himself resided at 3 Cranston Place. The architects, Young & 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, and who designed a large number of contemporary terraces throughout Belfast during the Victorian period. The two buildings at numbers 352 to 354 were added in 1899 in a similar style to the earlier four. By the time of the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901 to 1902, the entire surrounding area had been developed with terraced streets.

The rateable value of number 344 was set at £48 in 1877. The first recorded occupant was a Mr T. Kelly, a linen merchant. By the time of the 1911 census the house was occupied by William Aird, an oil merchant, and was described as a first-class dwelling of 13 rooms with a wash house and coal house as its only outbuildings. The Aird family continued to live there until the 1950s. By the 1930s, ownership of numbers 344 to 350 had passed to a Mr Francis Curley, and the rateable value of number 344 had been slightly reduced to £47. During the Second World War the building was requisitioned and occupied by His Majesty's Government. In 1965 the property was purchased by a Mr T. Dunseith, who converted it into self-contained apartments, valued at £73 by the end of the Second Revaluation covering 1956 to 1972. The terrace was listed in 1987. At the time of the second survey, number 344 continued to be used as private apartments.