Mountsandel Cottage, 46 Mountsandel Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52 1JE

Mountsandel Cottage is a detached, symmetrically composed three-bay single-storey house with attic, built around 1820. The rectangular structure was extensively renovated around 1930 and subsequently extended to the east with a two-storey rendered wing added around 1994.

The building sits on the northeast side of Mountsandel Road, set back behind a tall rendered wall and situated within extensive mature gardens planted with specimen trees. Access is via a winding bituminous drive opening onto the road at the north end through a pair of early wrought-iron gates mounted on matching iron posts.

The original house features a pitched natural slate roof with black clay ridge tiles and two chimneystacks topped with clay pots. Replacement guttering runs to boxed timber eaves supported on diminutive paired brackets. A three-sided canted glazed dormer sits on the rear pitch. The walls are finished in pebble-dash render with rusticated rendered quoins.

Window openings are square-headed with architrave surrounds and concrete sills, most being early twentieth-century six-over-six timber sash windows with margin lights. The symmetrical front elevation displays a central door opening flanked by a window, both set within elliptical-headed recesses with moulded architrave surrounds featuring keystones and rising from a concrete sill at floor level. The door itself sits within a tripartite pilastered timber doorcase with double-leaf four-panelled doors, multi-light sidelights with margin panes, and a stepped lintel cornice. Stone steps lead from the door to the front garden.

The east gable is abutted by a single-bay two-storey link block connected to a two-storey house built around 1994, which emulates the external detailing of the original structure. The rear elevation is three windows wide and incorporates a three-sided canted bay window with moulded cornice and period-appropriate timber sash windows. The west gable features a timber-framed conservatory with a pair of square-headed window openings at attic level, fitted with moulded architrave surrounds and two-over-two timber sash windows.

Historically, the dwelling predates the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 and corresponds to the western-most block shown on that map. The structure was extended eastward by the second edition map of 1849-50, with a further block added after 1923. According to Griffith's Valuation of 1856-64, the property was occupied by Reverend Richard P Young, Curate of Coleraine Parish from 1850 to 1859, who leased the house and offices on a plot exceeding eight acres valued at £13 10 shillings from Samuel W Knox, Mayor of Coleraine. The house subsequently passed to Mary Knox and briefly housed Reverend Henry Stewart O'Hara, Rector of Coleraine from 1869 to 1894, from 1872. From 1875, it was let to successive tenants, including Jane Crawford, a sixty-year-old widow recorded in the 1901 census living with three adult children, one working as a foundry manager, likely at the nearby Kennedy's foundry producing turbines and agricultural machinery. At that time, the eight-room house was designated second class.

Around 1923, Frederick W Young took over the property and established the nearby Mountsandel Nursery, noted on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1923. Tomato houses were constructed to the east of the dwelling at this period, and contemporary alterations to the house itself—including a new dormer and bay window—increased its valuation to £25. Valuer's notes from the 1930s record ground-floor accommodation comprising two reception rooms, kitchen, scullery, and pantry, with four bedrooms, bathroom, water closet, and hot press on the first floor. Extensive tomato and mushroom houses with associated heating chambers and water tanks were subsequently laid out in adjacent fields throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The dwelling was sold by the nursery owner around 1948 and has continued in domestic use.

Though the later east extension detracts somewhat from the original composition, the house retains considerable historic detailing both internally and externally and benefits significantly from its mature garden setting.