86 Sandown Road, Belfast, BT5 6GY

A single storey dwelling over part basement, with an unusual asymmetric plan and complex building history. The rendered rear section was built in 1890-91 as a gate lodge for the now demolished Sandown House, with a red brick front section added around 1898. The building sits on the eastern side of Sandown Road on sloping ground, immediately north of what was a railway line until the 1950s.

The building has an irregular and sprawling footprint. The later red brick addition to the north is roughly square in plan with a canted bay to the north-east and another to the west. The roof is part flat (to the west) with pitched, partly-hipped sections to the east. The older southern section is L-shaped and gable-ended, with a small roof projection to the east that combines gabled and hipped elements. This section abuts a smaller hipped-roof rendered block, possibly originally a freestanding shed, which has been extended southwards with a covered yard to its west side between it and the main building.

Window openings vary in size and shape, featuring flat-arch brick lintels, flat-headed treatments in rendered walls, segmental-headed examples in brick, and a slightly Tudoresque tripartite window. Most window frames are now uPVC replacements. Wall finishes comprise red clay facing brick, plain render, and ruled and lined render. The pitched roof sections are slated in blue-black natural slate with ridges of red fireclay batten-roll style featuring fireclay finials and plain fireclay ridge tiles. Hip ridges are formed in lead sheet over batten rolls. Two squat rendered pot-less chimneystacks rise through the southern ridge.

The north façade is asymmetric, with the main entrance composed of a uPVC door with sidelights and overlight positioned left of centre. To its immediate left is a canted bay with hipped roof, while to the right – covering over half the elevation – is plain red brick walling with no openings. The east elevation is informal with three advancing bays to the left, the leftmost belonging to the shed section and the other two to the 1898 extension. The second and third advancing bays each have a single window, while the first bay has two windows. To the right of the third bay is a relatively large window. The second bay is gabled and topped with a rectangular box containing a water cistern. The south elevation is largely obscured by vegetation, but the basement level is fully exposed due to ground fall on this side. The gables at the far right are blind, with two windows to the upper level and one to the lower level set back to their left. The west elevation has a canted bay at the far left, followed by a short flat-roofed section with a large window. To its right is the gable of the original section, featuring a tripartite window arrangement with the centre light raised and a stone drip moulding above. Further right, set well back from the main elevation line, are a wide upper-floor window and a narrow lower-level window.

To the south-west of the building, next to Sandown Road, stands a high coursed rubble wall with rough coping enclosing a rectangular yard. A gateway with corrugated-metal sheeted gate opens to the western side of the yard.