70 Dunedin Terrace, Lodge Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52 1ND

No. 70 Dunedin Terrace is a two-bay, two-storey-with-attic end-of-terrace townhouse, built around 1880 to designs by local architects and brothers J & W Kirkpatrick of Blindgate Street, Coleraine. It sits on the north side of Lodge Road in Coleraine town centre and forms part of a terrace of seven houses — the only known work by the Kirkpatrick brothers. Despite some alterations and refurbishments over the years, the building retains much of its original detailing and stands as a well-preserved example of a typical late-Victorian terraced townhouse. It shares group value with the other listed buildings in the terrace.

Architectural Description

The house is square on plan, with a two-storey canted bay and a two-and-a-half-storey return to the rear. The roof is a mansard in natural slate with blue-black angled ridge tiles and fish-scale tiles; the canted bay has its own slate roof with leaded hips and ridges. There is a red-brick and rendered chimneystack, and cast-iron ogee rainwater goods run along a projecting eaves course. The walls are painted smooth render set on a contrasting plinth, with a platband between the floors and a moulded eaves cornice.

Windows throughout are segmental-headed 1/1 timber sash with horns and projecting painted sills. At ground-floor level on the canted bay, the windows are square-headed with a continuous sill course. The attic has two gabled dormers, each containing a 1/1 round-headed window in a timber frame, with carved timber brackets under the eaves.

The principal elevation faces southwest. The two-storey canted bay occupies the left side, with a window to each facet. To the right at ground floor is the entrance door, with a window above it at first-floor level. The door itself is a bolection-moulded four-panelled timber door with a lion-head knocker, set within a segmental-headed doorcase with panelled sidelights and a plain transom light, and accessed via a single stone step.

The northwest elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The northeast (rear) elevation was only partially viewed during inspection. The two-and-a-half-storey gabled return on the left has a projecting chimneybreast to the centre of the gable, flanked by a 1/1 window at upper-floor levels; there is a lean-to extension at ground floor. The left cheek of this return has a uPVC window at first-floor level and a timber window opening on a hinge at ground floor. The southeast gable has a uPVC window at attic level on the right.

Setting

The house sits to the north side of Lodge Road in a residential area on the approach to the town centre. It is set back from the road, with a lawned front garden and a bitmac pathway leading to the entrance door. The garden is bounded by mature hedges and modern timber fencing, with a painted smooth rendered wall to the front, a saddleback coping, and a square pier with a pointed cap. The rear yard is enclosed by a roughcast rendered wall to the southeast and a two-storey roughcast rendered slated outbuilding to the northeast. There is a timber window opening at first-floor right over a large square-headed opening fitted with a modern timber door. To the northeast lies a concrete communal yard with a gravelled parking area.

Historical Background

Lodge Road was laid out between 1833 and 1845 and is first shown on O'Hagan's map of Coleraine dating from 1845. It takes its name from a dwelling house called The Lodge at its southern end, now replaced by a hotel. The terrace was considered to occupy the best — and sunniest — side of Lodge Road and was home largely to middle-class merchants and professionals who kept at least one domestic servant. The closing decades of the 19th century saw a building boom of terraces and villas in Coleraine, said to have begun in the late 1850s when Thomas Boyd built Waterford Terrace at the Coleraine end of Lodge Road. Dunedin Terrace appears in valuation records from 1880, was given its name in 1881, and is first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1904.

The first recorded occupier was Henry De Monepeide in 1881. The house, office, yard and small garden were initially valued at £22, reduced to £20 in 1887, probably following an appeal. Subsequent occupiers included Thomas Agnew (from 1887), the Reverend Robert McClenahan — minister of First Coleraine Presbyterian Church from 1894 to 1905 — from 1895, and solicitor Robert O'Neill from 1900, who lived at the property with his two unmarried sisters and a 21-year-old general domestic servant (1901 census). Reverend McClenahan made a small addition to the rear of the house at a cost of approximately £50, which resulted in the valuation rising back to £22.

William Abraham, father of surgeon and writer James Johnston Abraham (as noted in the Dictionary of Irish Biography), moved in around 1907, followed by James B. Stewart in 1911 — a retired leather merchant and widower who lived with his brothers-in-law (a retired draper and a retired farmer), his sister-in-law, and a domestic servant (1911 census). Later occupiers included Reverend McFarland (1917), James B. Stewart who returned in 1918, and Hugh Craig (1924), with the Craig family remaining in residence until at least the 1950s.

Valuer's notes from the 1930s record the ground-floor accommodation as a reception room, kitchen, scullery and pantry; the first floor as two bedrooms, a bathroom, a WC and a reception room; and the second floor as three bedrooms. By the 1930s, each house in the terrace was said to have cost £1,400 to build, was lit by gas, and the rear outbuilding was cobbled inside. A valuer's plan from 1912 shows the two-storey rear extension and outbuildings against the yard wall and at the rear of the yard, all of which remain in place today.

The house was listed in 1977 and converted to offices on the ground floor during the 1970s. Renovations took place during the 1980s. It is one of the best-preserved representative examples of late-19th-century terraced architecture in Coleraine and is of significant local interest.