354 Antrim Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT15 5AE

354 Antrim Road is a former end-of-terrace house, built around 1899, now used as an orthodontist surgery. It is a single-bay, two-storey building with an attic, constructed in red brick, with a three-bay north side elevation and a two-storey rear return. The architect is unknown. The house was originally named 'Dunmara' and forms the northern bookend of a coherent and distinctive group of late 19th-century houses on the west side of Antrim Road in the Skegoneill townland of Belfast.

The building is irregular in plan. Its half-hipped roof is covered in natural slate with roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles and exposed timber rafter tails. Lead valleys and cast-iron rainwater goods are in place, along with decorative timber bargeboards supported on decorative paired timber brackets. The chimney stack to the south party wall is profiled and corbelled red brick with clay pots.

The walls are red brick laid in Flemish bond with original pointing, moulded red brick and sandstone string courses, and flush sandstone ashlar dressings. There is a red brick plinth course with chamfered red brick trim. Window openings are square-headed and fitted with original single-pane timber sash windows with ogee horns, painted sandstone ashlar sills, and flush painted sandstone ashlar lintels with bowtel mouldings.

The single-bay east front elevation features paired windows at each level, including a wall-head dormer to the attic with a hipped slate roof. The south side elevation is abutted by the adjoining house at No. 352. The west rear elevation has a shallow lean-to section abutted by a two-storey red brick return; upper floors have single-pane timber sash windows, the ground floor has 2/2-pane sash windows, and there is a steel-sheeted door to the return.

The building differs from the rest of the terrace in that it is fenestrated mainly to the north side, where the stepped north elevation features a two-storey canted bay to the right, with the principal entrance set into the re-entrant angle to the left. A wall-head dormer sits above the bay window, as on the front elevation. The doorway has a trefoil-headed opening formed within a painted sandstone surround decorated with bowtel and foliate carvings and ogee-moulded stop-chamfer stones at sill level. The door itself is the original six-panelled timber with bolection mouldings, fitted with original Art Nouveau brass door furniture, and has a replacement leaded trefoil fanlight. The north cheek of the entrance bay has square-headed window openings at ground and first floor levels with leaded coloured fixed glazing — replaced at ground floor level but original at first floor. There is interesting sandstone detailing throughout, including the elaborate door surround, which has been painted.

The original outhouses have been demolished and replaced with a new single-storey extension, though the two-storey rear return survives intact. A good portion of the historic interior detail also survives, making the building a good example of suburban housing in Belfast.

The house sits at the northern end of a terrace of six similar houses, set back from Antrim Road with a gravel front garden enclosed by hedging and replacement iron pedestrian gates hung on replacement red brick pillars. The rear yard is clay-tile paved and enclosed by tall red brick walls.

The Antrim Road was originally laid out in 1830. By the 1850s, as recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map, the land north of the Belfast Waterworks and Limestone Road remained predominantly rural. As Belfast's population grew and its shipbuilding, rope-making, and textile industries expanded, the townland of Skegoneill rapidly became one of the most affluent areas of the city, with a number of gentlemen's mansions and wealthy merchants' houses established there during the mid-19th century.

Nos. 344–354 Antrim Road were built on the grounds of Hopefield House, a two-storey, six-bay mansion formerly occupied by the Sinclair family. The majority of those grounds were built over during the 1870s. The first four houses in the terrace, Nos. 344–350, were known collectively as 'Clonsilla' and were constructed in 1877 for Andrew Wright, a local pawnbroker and clerk at the Belfast Loan Office on Ann Street, who himself resided at No. 3 Cranston Place. These were designed by Young & Mackenzie, an architectural partnership formed between Robert Young and John Mackenzie around 1867. The Dictionary of Irish Architects records the firm as the leading architects for the Presbyterian Church in the north-east, and they also received major commercial commissions in the city and designed a large number of Victorian terraces throughout Belfast.

Nos. 352 and 354 were added in 1899 in a style broadly similar to the earlier four houses, though both lack the third-storey Tudor-style projecting bay that characterises the adjoining terrace. Annual Revisions record that both were owned by William McConnell, a local commission agent, and that No. 354 was originally valued at £49. McConnell used the house as his private dwelling, and his family continued to occupy it until the 1950s. The 1911 census records that McConnell's widow, Mary McConnell, operated a boarding house from the premises at that time; the census building return described the house as a first-class dwelling comprising 14 rooms, with a wash house and coal house as its only outbuildings. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value was slightly reduced to £47. By the 1950s ownership had passed to a Mr H. Crawford, and by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) the rateable value had been further reduced to £46. Nos. 344–354 Antrim Road were listed in 1987. In 1999, No. 354 was converted to an orthodontist surgery, at which point it underwent an extensive renovation including restoration of the roof, installation of cast-iron rainwater goods, repointing of the brickwork, and replacement of the original front doors.

Together with the four houses originally known as 'Clonsilla' (Nos. 344–350) and the immediately adjoining property formerly known as 'Dun Conal' (No. 352), which was built at the same time as Dunmara, No. 354 forms a coherent and distinctive row on the Antrim Road.