6 Lodge Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52 1NB

6 Lodge Road is a two-bay, three-storey-with-attic mid-terraced townhouse built in 1879, located on the east side of Lodge Road in Coleraine town centre. The building forms part of an important and prominent terrace of sixteen houses built between circa 1859 and circa 1888, one of the best-preserved examples of mid to late nineteenth-century terraced architecture in the town and a significant contribution to Coleraine's architectural character.

The house is square on plan with a pitched natural slate roof featuring blue and black angled ridge tiles and rendered chimneystack. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods are mounted on bracketed eaves. The walling is painted smooth render on a chamfered plinth with moulded string-course and masonry fascia between ground and first floor. Windows are 1/1 timber sash with horns in stop-end chamfered reveals and projecting painted sills. A tripartite timber-sheeted gabled dormer to the attic has round-headed window openings with a 1/1 centre light and decorative bargeboards featuring trefoil detailing and finial.

The principal southwest elevation is three openings wide at each floor. A half-panelled timber door to the recess at ground floor right is abutted by an original half-timber porch, shared with neighbouring number 8. The porch has a bracketed cornice surmounted by decorative cast-iron balustrade, is lit to the southwest and opens at the left cheek with a replacement glazed timber door with transom light. This shared porch appears as an original feature on the 1882 Ordnance Survey map.

The northwest gable elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The northeast rear elevation has two windows at second floor, abutted at first floor by a modern brick extension, which is further abutted by a single-storey extension with plastic roof covering. The southeast elevation is abutted by the adjoining building.

The setting comprises a front yard set back from Lodge Road, laid in modern paving and enclosed by a rendered wall with painted coping. A tarmacadamed alley to the northwest leads to the rear yard and provides access to a car park to the east. An outbuilding to the rear, part of the terrace, comprises a two-storey painted roughcast render building with slated roof and rendered chimneystack. The southwest elevation has two uPVC windows at first floor and is abutted at ground floor by the extension covering the former rear yard. The northeast elevation has two uPVC windows at first floor over a modern garage opening with up-and-over garage door and a replacement timber-sheeted entrance door.

The terrace was built for Coleraine's rising middle classes and is first shown on the large-scale Ordnance Survey map of 1882. Numbers 6 and 8 were named 'Cecilia Place', recorded on large-scale maps and in valuation records. The group of four houses (numbers 2 to 8) was inserted into valuation records in 1879. The terrace was considered to be on the best side of Lodge Road because of its sunny aspect and was occupied largely by middle-class merchants and professionals who kept at least one servant. Lodge Road itself was laid out between 1833 and 1845, first appearing on O'Hagan's map of Coleraine from 1845, and is named after 'The Lodge', a dwelling house at the southern end, now replaced by a hotel.

The closing decades of the nineteenth century saw a building boom of terraces and villas in Coleraine of which local people were extremely proud. The boom began in the late 1850s when Thomas Boyd built Waterford Terrace at numbers 26 to 32.

The house, offices, yard and small garden was initially valued at £24 10 shillings and occupied in 1879 by Connolly Steen, leased from Robert Ferris, who was most likely the developer. Subsequent residents included Alexander D Williamson in 1881 and Annie Mooney in 1894, when the valuation was dropped to £22. Later occupiers were W J Irwin in 1912, Elizabeth Steinberger in 1927, and Ernest G Bishop in 1947.

Valuer's notes from the 1930s record the accommodation as follows: ground floor comprising reception, kitchen, scullery and pantry; first floor with reception and two bedrooms; second floor with two bedrooms and bathroom; third floor with two attic bedrooms. The house had water and gas lighting at this time. The yard contained a coal house and closet, with an outbuilding at the bottom still present today.

The building was listed in 1977. Renovations took place in the 1970s including treatment for woodworm and dry rot. An extension was built at first floor level in 2012. The building has been amalgamated with its neighbour at number 4 in recent years and is in current use as a dental surgery. The proportions and detailing are typical of the period and largely intact, though the building's interest lies largely due to its group value as part of one of Coleraine's best-preserved Victorian terraces and its significance to the town's architectural character.