Somerton Private Nursing Home For the E M I, 77 Somerton Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT15 4DE

77 Somerton Road is a detached, symmetrical, three-bay, two-storey red brick Victorian house with attic, built around 1900 in the townland of Skegoneill, Belfast. It sits at the corner of Somerton Road and Somerton Park within its own grounds, and is one of only a few substantial houses to survive from the development that followed the breakup of the Fortwilliam Estate in the 1860s and 1870s. The unsigned plans for the house are held at Belfast City Hall and record a design date of January 1900; the completed building first appeared in the Annual Revisions of 1901. The property lies within a conservation area.

The house was built on land owned by Edward Allworthy, an estate agent and accountant formerly of Langford Villa, Duncairn Street. Its first tenant was William Barnett, a local grain importer and partner in W. & R. Barnett grain produce merchants, who named the house Rosindale and leased it at a valuation of £83. By around 1911 John Henderson, a wholesale butter, egg and provision merchant operating at St. George's Market, had taken possession and renamed it Ardbarron. The 1901 and 1911 census building return describes the house as a first-class dwelling with 12 rooms and a single outbuilding shed. Henderson remained there until the 1940s. By the 1930s ownership had passed to a Ms. Mary Fairburn, and the rateable value had risen to £90. Following Henderson's death in 1949, the house was occupied by William A. Agnew until the 1980s. The building was listed in 1987. Around 1988 it was converted to a nursing home: the original rear return shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–02 was demolished at that time and the current two-storey red brick extension facing onto Somerton Park was added. A glazed conservatory on the south side of the building was installed around 1990. The building was extensively renovated around 1990 and continues in use as a nursing home.

The roof of the main house is pitched natural slate with a dentil eaves course to the north-west elevation and stone finials to the apex gables. Two-stage chimney stacks rise from the gable ends, each with a projecting cornice, flat stone coping and terracotta chimney pots. The projecting semicircular front bays carry conical slate roofs with stone finials, and the guttering, downpipes and hoppers are ogee-moulded metal. The single-storey extension to the north-east has a hipped natural slate roof with a raised central section: the upper part carries a dentil eaves course while the lower section has overhanging projecting eaves with exposed rafter ends. The canted bay to the north-east also has a hipped roof.

The walling throughout the main house is red brick laid in English Garden Wall bond with red sandstone dressings. The north-west front elevation is symmetrical and ornamented with decorative terracotta detailing to the eaves. There is a continuous moulded drip course above the first-floor windows and to the ground-floor windows of the curved bays, a decorative floriated terracotta band at first-floor level, and a projecting moulded plinth course. The square-headed openings to the curved bays have smooth ashlar chamfered surrounds with slender colonnettes between them and a continuous stone sill. The first-floor opening to the centre bay is square-headed with a sandstone head and stop-chamfered brick jambs. Windows throughout the curved bays are one-over-one sliding timber sash. The front door opening is elliptical-headed with a drip mould, floral label stops, an ashlar moulded surround carried on Corinthian colonnettes, and a decorative keystone over.

The north-east elevation carries a decorative terracotta string course above a pair of second-floor square-headed openings. The two-storey canted bay on this elevation has a dentil eaves course, a string course and drip mould to the first floor, a decorative floriated terracotta band at first-floor level, and a projecting moulded plinth course. Ground-floor openings have one-over-one timber sash windows; first-floor openings have been fitted with replacement uPVC windows. The single-storey Arts and Crafts style extension to the north-east has corner oriel canted windows supported on stone brackets with leaded glass. The south-west elevation has a decorative terracotta string course above a pair of second-floor square-headed openings with one-over-one timber sash windows, and three first-floor windows fitted with top-hung uPVC replacements. A later conservatory is attached to the north-west side of the building and has a shallow pitched hipped slate roof, a brick plinth wall and timber framing, with decorative glass to its south-east elevation.

Internally, original detailing survives in limited form, including a glazed timber screen to the vestibule and moulded architraves to the doorways.

The grounds include lawns to the north-west, a north entrance with a cast-iron gateway, and tree and hedge boundaries to the north-west, north-east and south-east. A timber fence runs along the south-west boundary.