Breezemount House, Castlerock Road, Coleraine, Co.Londonderry

Breezemount House is a symmetrical three-bay, two-storey-with-attic detached house, built around 1861 and currently operating as a bed and breakfast. It occupies an elevated site on the west side of Castlerock Road in Coleraine town centre, and is a good example of the type of dwelling typically built during the mid-19th century development of the town.

The main block is rectangular, with an offset rectangular block to the rear. Single-storey canted bay windows project to the south and east, and the rear is abutted by a two-storey stairwell bay. A modern single-storey brick extension and a modern conservatory to the north are of no architectural interest. The roof is hipped and covered in natural slate, with leaded hips and ridges and rendered chimneystacks with moulded caps. Heavily overhanging timber eaves with brackets carry cast-iron ogee rainwater goods, with cast-iron downpipes and hoppers below.

The walls are finished in painted smooth render on a contrasting plinth, with straight-channelled quoins at ground floor level and moulded corner panels at first floor level. A platband runs below the eaves, and a cornice to the tops of the canted bays extends to a moulded string-course at first floor sill level. The windows are replacement uPVC units set in moulded architraves with projecting painted sills. Venetian-style three-light windows appear at first floor level, with a segmental-headed window with keyblock at the first floor centre.

The principal elevation faces east and is symmetrically arranged around a central breakfront with an Ionic portico. The left and right bays each have Venetian-style windows at first floor level above canted bay windows at ground floor. The portico is reached by five sandstone steps and comprises pilasters and two Ionic columns with entasis supporting a plain entablature. The entrance door is a bolection-moulded four-panel timber door with brass furniture, flanked by sidelights with replacement glazing.

The south elevation has two windows at each floor to the main block. The rear block projects slightly to the left and has a Venetian-style window and a camber-headed window at first floor, over a canted bay and a square window at ground floor. The west, rear elevation has windows at both first and ground floor to the right; at the centre it is abutted by the two-storey stairwell bay, which has a round-headed stairwell window to the right and two window openings to the left. The stairwell bay is in turn abutted to the north by a flat-roofed single-storey service block with a timber-sheeted door, and to the west by the modern brick extension. The north elevation mirrors the south; the rear block to the right is set back and has two windows at first floor level, with the modern uPVC conservatory at ground floor.

The setting has been somewhat compromised. The house is accessed via a tarmacadamed entrance to the west shared with 20th century housing built on land formerly belonging to the property. The Castlerock Road entrance retains painted render entrance walls on a plinth with saddleback coping, rising to square piers with moulded panels and corniced moulded caps topped by ball finials on plinths, though the finial survives only to the right pier. A secondary entrance on the south side of the house has square painted rendered piers with raised caps topped by ball finials. There is a tarmacadamed forecourt to the front and a parking area to the north. The rear yard, accessed from the north through a segmental-headed archway, is laid with modern brick paviours. Little remains of the original outbuildings, which have been much modified or replaced; they now include a modern two-storey painted smooth render accommodation block accessed at first floor from the west via a uPVC entrance door and concrete steps. The site is bounded to Captain Street Upper at the southwest by a roughcast rendered wall with coping; at the south side of the house, walls terminate in square piers with pointed caps and modern timber-sheeted gates. The northern and eastern boundaries are formed by tall random rubble walls with freestone coping.

Breezemount House was constructed on land leased from the Worshipful Company of Clothmakers. It does not appear on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1849–50 nor in Griffith's Valuation of 1856, but Annual Revisions between 1859 and 1865 record its completion, at which point it was valued at £48 and leased to a Mr Stewart Hunter. Hunter was a grocer and wholesale tea dealer with premises on Bridge Street, Coleraine, who established his business in the town in 1846 and expanded his Bridge Street store around 1874. He was also a local magistrate and importer of tea. Hunter was the first occupant of Breezemount House and resided there until his death in 1897, when he left properties and effects valued at £4,776 to his sons-in-law. They did not occupy the house, and in 1898 a Mr Daniel McLaughlin purchased the lease.

The 1901 Census records McLaughlin, then aged 45 and employed as a solicitor, living at Breezemount with his wife Mary, aged 42, and their five children. The census building return classified Breezemount House as a first-class dwelling with 12 rooms and a number of outbuildings including a stable, coach house, piggery, store, and coal house. These outbuildings were located in a rectangular-plan structure constructed to the northwest of the house around 1904, as first depicted on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of that year. The rateable value of the house remained unchanged from its construction in 1861 until the Annual Revisions ceased in 1931; it was not until the First General Revaluation of property in Northern Ireland in 1935 that the rating was adjusted to £60.

Daniel McLaughlin continued to reside at Breezemount until his death in 1941, when the house passed to his son Charles McLaughlin, also a solicitor. Writing in 1972, Girvan described the house as "a two-storey three-bay house with irregular side facades, rendered, with Ionic porch, flanked by single-storey canted bays; Georgian glazing bars; shallow hipped roof," and noted that by that date it had been converted into residential flats. The Ordnance Survey map of 1967 records no discernible alteration to the layout of the house since the early 20th century, although an outbuilding along Captain Street Upper had been constructed by that year.

Breezemount House was listed in 1977. Around 2001, the current owner acquired the former flats and converted the property into a bed and breakfast. The renovation and restoration that followed resulted in modifications to the original outbuildings, portions of which have been replaced with modern additions. The replacement uPVC windows alter the original character of the building, though not irreversibly. The main dwelling has otherwise been well maintained and retains its original Victorian character.