4 Knockbreda Park

4 Knockbreda Park is a two-storey, double-fronted red-brick Late Victorian house built around 1900, located just off the Ormeau Road in a suburban setting approximately 4.5 kilometres from the city centre. The house stands as one of the finest examples in Rosetta, distinguished by its architectural quality among many similar detached and semi-detached properties of the period.

The rectangular plan comprises two large semi-circular bays at the front and a two-storey return to the rear. The external walls are constructed in red clay brick with sandstone lintels, sills and decorative brick string-courses. The roof is finished in Bangor blue natural slate with cast-iron rainwater goods.

The front elevation is dominated by a central doorway set within a segmental arched opening. The surround features polished granite columns raised on sandstone bases with foliate capitals, all in carved sandstone. The arch itself displays alternating raised blocks and layered archivolt with a foliate-carved keystone. The door comprises double leaves with raised panels, plain glazed side lights and a segmental overlight. Flanking this doorway are unusually large two-storey semi-circular bays, each containing three 1/1 painted timber windows on each floor. Directly above the door is a matching 1/1 timber window. Red sandstone forms all lintels and sills. The entire elevation is characterised by decorative brick string-courses, with more substantial brick cornices at first-floor level on the bays and at eaves level, these cornices turning the corners for a short distance.

Windows throughout are predominantly 1/1 painted, single-glazed timber sliding sash.

The side elevation to the west features a canted single-storey bay towards the rear of the main block, with two square-headed 1/1 timber sliding sash windows on the first floor above. The east elevation is blind except for its decorative brick string-courses.

The rear (north) elevation comprises a two-storey return in clay brick with a cat-slide roof. The main block contains windows on each floor to the left of the return. The return features a large staircase landing window on the first floor. A further single-storey return with a double-pitched roof is attached to the north, containing on the yard side three small rooms including an outside WC, and a larger store to the west. The east side of the return has a window and door to the kitchen on the ground floor with a matching window above, while the west face displays two 1/1 windows on each floor.

Interior detail is of high quality throughout, matching the refined exterior treatment.

The front boundary to Knockbreda Park originally comprised two central gate pillars with scalloped sandstone copings (now missing the outer sandstone collars which remain in the front garden), flanked on either side by original red clay brick walling with sandstone coping and original ornate brick terminal pillars with sandstone copings. Replacement steel railings have been installed. The front garden contains an informal mixture of mature shrubs, trees and hedging with concrete paths and grassed areas. This treatment extends around the east side to the rear, creating a private informal setting. The western boundary is closer to the building.

The house was built in 1900–01 by James Grant, originally known as 'Grantville'. The architect's identity is unknown. It was first leased to James Brown Porter (died 1908), then to William Waugh, a tea merchant, around 1909. Edward Barnes, an unemployed clerk, occupied it by 1911. Waugh returned as resident by 1916, with James Grant himself living there by 1924. Following Grant's death in 1929, Patrick McGeeney, a publican, became householder by 1932. John D'Arcy is recorded there by 1943. His widow, Margaret D'Arcy (born 1918), an actress, retained the house into the 1980s.

The site lies within what were previously the grounds of Knockbreda Rectory, built in 1816. The current Knockbreda Park development began in 1885 when the western side of the rectory grounds, close to present-day Ormeau Road, opened for development with red-brick detached and semi-detached suburban dwellings along the eastern side of the north-south stretch. In the later 1890s, larger similarly-styled detached properties were built on the western side fronting the main road, with 4 and 6 Knockbreda Park added to the short northern boundary in the early 1900s, forming the beginnings of the main east-west stretch of Knockbreda Park, a thoroughfare further developed eastwards largely in the 1930s.