1 Rosetta Park, BELFAST, BT6 0DJ

1 Rosetta Park is a two-storey detached house with attic, built in 1887 in the late Victorian style. It stands on Rosetta Park, a quiet canted street running between Ravenhill Road and the main body of Rosetta Park, approximately 2.5 miles from Belfast city centre. The surrounding area is predominantly residential, characterised by late Victorian semi-detached houses and some early twentieth-century detached dwellings.

The house has a rectangular, symmetrical plan with a two-storey return to the rear. The roof is covered in natural Bangor blue slate with a terracotta ridge-crest. The walls are constructed of red clay brick laid in English Garden Wall bond. Windows throughout are 1/1 uPVC sliding sash, double-glazed, and rainwater goods are uPVC.

The front elevation faces north and features a central doorway with full-height canted bays on either side. The panelled front door has glazed upper lights and a semi-circular light above, set within an opening with stepped sandstone quoins, a central keystone, and a label moulding with carved head-stops representing a king and a queen. The queen carving bears the inscription 'GOOD MORNING' incised into her crown. Windows in both bays have sandstone sills and lintels. A small brick dentil course connects the openings below the ground floor lintel level, with a slightly larger brick dentil course running continuously beneath the first-floor sills. The bays terminate in hipped slated roofs with elaborate brick eaves courses. The main gabled roof features tall red brick chimney stacks with projecting courses at each gable.

The east side elevation includes a canted bay to the ground floor matching the front elevation. The dentil courses continue across this elevation, though the eaves courses return only a short distance and the gable has plain verge boards. Additional windows appear on the ground floor to the left of the bay, two to the first floor, and a smaller window at attic level, all of the same type as those on the front.

The rear elevation to the south features an original two-storey return in brick with a cat-slide roof. Detailing is similar to the front, though lintels are brick on end and brick string courses are omitted. The main elevation has French doors to the ground floor right, a top-hung uPVC window to the left, and a central staircase window to the first floor retaining its original geometric coloured glass. Two further smaller windows occupy the first floor, two additional windows appear on the right-hand cheek, and a door stands to the left. To the left of the return are two further windows.

The west elevation is largely blank except for a single attic window, with the two brick string courses continuing from the front elevation. The west gable wall rises to 2.5 metres, screening the rear garden and nearly connecting to a large single-storey garage with a smaller outbuilding at right-angles. The garage has a hipped roof, a modern steel door, and two painted timber windows with inward-opening hoppers.

The house is set back approximately 5 metres from the footpath and has two pairs of red brick pillars surmounted with ornate sandstone ball caps. The front and side boundaries are defined by stained vertical timber boards, waist-high, with a short stretch of painted steel railings between stained timber pedestrian and vehicular gates. The spacious garden, predominantly grassed with mature trees and shrubs along the eastern boundary, extends around the side and rear to meet the garage. Some modern concrete paving and older paving in random pattern are present.

Rosetta Park was developed within the grounds of Rosetta House, a pre-1807 residence probably built by the Coulson family, one of several medium-sized semi-rural gentlemen's residences that characterised the Ormeau and Ravenhill areas before suburban expansion in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. The street was developed by R.J. McConnell & Co. and laid out in 1887, with red brick detached and semi-detached dwellings constructed between that date and the early 1890s, and most of the remainder added after 1945. The northern and eastern sections were originally known as 'Rosetta Park – First Avenue', while the southern section was 'Rosetta Park – Second Avenue', distinctions which had been dropped by around 1930. The architect of No. 1 is not known.

Initially named 'Farnham Villa', the first occupant was Thomas McCherry, a grocer, followed around 1894 by Alexander W. Child. Hugh Macauley, a linen merchant, took the lease around 1898 and renamed the house 'Lislaedh'. He is recorded in the 1901 census as living there with his wife Lilian, their two adult children, and two domestic servants; the house was noted as 'first class' with 13 rooms in use. The 1911 census records the widowed Mrs. Macauley, her widowed daughter Mrs. Mary McArdle, and a single domestic servant as occupants. By 1918 the property had passed to T.J. Smith, a Commissioner of Police, and was succeeded around 1920 by Hugh Dougal, a carrier with the firm A. Dougal & Son Ltd., who was awarded an M.B.E. in 1950 for services as a prison visitor. Mr. Dougal remained at No. 1 until at least 1980.