Former Caretaker's House, 29 Seabourne Parade, Belfast, Co Antrim BT15 3NB

Former Caretaker's House, 29 Seabourne Parade, Belfast

This is a two-storey, three-bay Neo-Georgian house in rustic red brick with reconstituted stone dressings, built between 1932 and 1934 as the caretaker's lodge for the adjacent Seaview Primary School. It was constructed by local builders J. & R. W. Taggart to designs by R. S. Wilshere, architect to the Belfast Education Committee, and is now in use as a private residence. The listing extends to the gate lodge itself, its gate, walling, and railings.

Historical Background

Following the Partition of Ireland, the 1923 Education Act established the Belfast Education Committee, which embarked on an ambitious programme of building new modern public elementary schools across the city to replace the inadequate church and national schools that had previously predominated. In 1932, the Belfast Education Committee applied for a loan of £19,323 to fund a new public elementary school on the site of the former Seaview House. The house itself had been demolished in the early 20th century, and housing — known as the Seaview Villa Colony — was developed on its former grounds from 1927 to 1928. By the early 1930s, the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map records that the current pattern of terraced streets was largely complete. The growth of this new housing district made a new elementary school necessary.

The school and its accompanying caretaker's house were designed by Reginald Sharman Wilshere (1888–1961), a Belfast-based English architect and planner appointed as architect to the Belfast Corporation Education Committee in 1926. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Wilshere designed 26 new schools in Belfast. His typical approach was to build large schools arranged around quadrangles with corridors open to the air. Writing in the Irish Builder, Wilshere stated that his view was that "if the children of a district have no beauty in their daily surroundings, they need beauty all the more in their schools." In 1932, he noted that "every one of [my schools] has something distinctive about it architecturally, though all follow the same line in planning, and in that respect are in conformity with the best modern practice." Architectural historian Paul Larmour has described these as "the first modern schools to be built anywhere in Ireland," ranging in appearance from the Neo-Georgian to the outright modernistic. Wilshere was notably influenced by Dutch modernist architect Willem Marinus Dudok (1884–1974).

Seaview Primary School itself is a typical Wilshere design: an extensive two-storey building in rustic brick with reconstituted stone dressings and hipped slated roofs behind parapets, exhibiting long horizontal strips of windows, corner glazing, broad round-arched openings, and chevron motifs in metal window grills and wooden door panelling, with Art Deco patterning in flat ironwork gates. In contrast to this modernistic school building, the adjoining caretaker's house was designed in the simpler Neo-Georgian style that was popular in Ulster during the inter-war period. It is one of very few surviving caretaker's residences associated with Wilshere's important inter-war schools. The school and caretaker's house were listed together in 1994. By the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the total rateable value of the combined site was set at £480; this had risen to £1,536 by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72). Belfast Street Directories record a Mr Joseph Hill as occupying the caretaker's house in 1943. The windows of the house were replaced in 2005.

Exterior

The building has a rectangular plan form and faces west onto the junction of Seabourne Parade and Seaview Drive. It has a steeply pitched hipped roof in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles and mitred hips, a soldier eaves course, and square-section metal guttering discharging to circular-section cast iron downpipes. A square-section central chimney rises prominently from the centre of the roof, finished with a reconstituted stone cap set on soldier-course brickwork and carrying four terracotta pots.

The walling is generally in English Garden Wall bond rustic red brick with cement pointing. Reconstituted stone is used for window cills and plinth bands, with rowlock-course brick window heads. Ground floor windows have additional red clay tile drip moulds above their rowlock brick heads. Windows throughout are generally square-headed openings fitted with replacement uPVC side-opening casements, each with two horizontal glazing bars, except where otherwise noted below.

Principal (West) Elevation

The front elevation faces west and is symmetrical. At ground floor level, a central angulated doorcase is flanked by narrow square-headed windows; three similar-sized windows sit above at first floor level. The plinth has two projecting painted reconstituted stone bands with soldier-course brickwork between them. The doorcase has a painted brick architrave and a replacement square-headed uPVC door with a glazed upper section, opening onto a single concrete step. Circular-section cast iron downpipes are positioned at the north-west and south-west ends of the elevation.

South Elevation

The southern elevation has two bays of slightly wider windows than those on the front west elevation. A square-headed doorway to the south-west is fitted with a painted timber panelled door with a glazed upper section. Beyond the south-west gable, an Art Deco painted metal pedestrian gate with flat metal geometric detailing gives access to steps and a walled area to the south. A blocked doorway in this area was formerly the caretaker's entrance to the school playground.

East Elevation

The two-bay east elevation has a raised ground floor with taller two-part casement windows fitted with three horizontal glazing bars. The plinth again has two reconstituted stone bands with soldier-course brickwork between them, the upper band forming a continuous cill course to the ground floor windows. The prominent chimney rises from the centre of the roof. Cast iron downpipes are located at both the south-east and north-east of this façade. Red brick walling with a reconstituted stone coping and a blocked doorway extends from the south-east corner, enclosing steps on the south side. The tarmac school playground extends up to the walling on the east and north elevations.

North Elevation

The north elevation has a raised ground floor with two bays of windows that are wider than those on the front west elevation, similar in character to the south elevation. A flight of steps from the north-west of the playground leads up to the public footpath.

Setting

The former caretaker's lodge sits within the south-west corner of Seaview Primary School's playground, to the south-west of the school building, with which it shares group value. It is set back from the red brick terrace houses along Seabourne Parade, behind a modest gravelled front garden enclosed by red brick dwarf walling topped with reconstituted stone coping and plain vertical metal railings, with a pedestrian gate to the centre. To the north-west, a pair of red brick piers with reconstituted stone caps and a gate of similar style give access to concrete steps leading to the lower school playground at the north and east. To the south-west, the Art Deco painted metal gate with flat metal geometric detailing gives access to an enclosed yard and steps leading to the walled area at the rear, with the blocked doorway formerly connecting to the school playground.

The replacement of the original windows with uPVC casements in 2005 is noted as an alteration detracting from the building's character.