37 Main Street, Castlerock, Co. Londonderry, BT51 4RA

A detached two-bay, two-storey red brick house designed by K.F. Lewis and built circa 1940, located on the north side of Main Street in Castlerock overlooking the Promenade and Irish Sea.

The house follows an L-shaped plan with a single-storey canted projection to the west and a conservatory to the re-entrant angle. It is accompanied by an original adjoining red brick garage and a modern single-storey flat-roof extension to the east. The steeply pitched hipped roof is covered in Westmoreland slate with diminishing course slating, angled terracotta ridge tiles, leaded valleys and swept eaves. Tall red brick chimneystacks with chamfered stalks and concrete caps project prominently. The walling is stretcher-bonded red brick with a header-bonded plinth course and a concrete string-course above ground floor level. Plastic rainwater goods run beneath heavily projecting timber eaves.

The principal south-facing elevation is extended by a conservatory to the left and a single-storey extension to the right. The main section is two openings wide at each floor, with the right window opening being wider. The ground floor features a canted section at right with a tripartite timber mullioned window to the centre and 6/6 windows to either side. A recessed entrance to the left sits in a splayed opening with a string-course rising to a shallow arch. The entrance contains an original round-headed hardwood timber door with five vertical panels and cast-iron furniture, approached by two curved stone steps beneath an ashlar sandstone doorcase with carved spandrels and moulded reveal. A 6/6 window lights the canted bay to the right, with another to the left wall.

The west elevation features a projecting bay at the left with a canted bay projection at ground floor lit by three plate glass windows, rising to a brick parapet with concrete coping enclosing a balcony. The first floor has a canted timber mullioned window and a glazed timber door opening to the balcony. The south elevation of this projection is lit by two 2/4 windows at first floor either side of a projecting chimneybreast. The north elevation has a canted timber mullioned oriel window and a window above at first floor left. The right bay contains four first-floor windows, three grouped at the right, above a later red brick and timber conservatory dating to circa 1980, lit to the south by three round-headed multi-paned timber windows.

The north elevation has two first-floor windows and three ground-floor windows of varying sizes. A canted timber mullioned oriel window at first floor right, featuring leaded-and-stained glass panels, is supported on a carved sandstone corbel. The east elevation is abutted at ground floor left by the flush flat-roof garage, with the modern single-storey flat-roof extension at right. A canted timber mullioned window and tripartite timber window light the first floor, with a projecting chimneybreast at first floor left.

The original slender glazing has been replaced by varying modern timber sash windows and casements with projecting concrete sills. The principal and north elevations retain some historic detailing typical of the interwar period. A single-storey timber conservatory has been sympathetically added to the re-entrant angle, and a single-storey extension to the rear is likewise sympathetically styled.

The garage opens to the south with an original partially glazed timber-sheeted door in a chamfered reveal. A red brick garden wall with a round-headed arch containing an original steel latch-gate abuts the garage at the east.

The property is situated on a mature raised plot with a tarmacadamed driveway to the south, a lawned and landscaped garden to the west, and a steep grassy bank to the rear. Original red brick boundary walls to the south feature mature hedging. The entrance from Main Street is marked by polygonal red brick piers with pointed concrete caps supporting original ornate steel gates.

K.F. Lewis was a Belfast-based architect mostly active during the 1940s and 1950s, though he undertook some work in the 1930s. The dwelling does not appear on the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland carried out in 1935, confirming construction after that date. It was first recorded in valuation sources in 1956 during the Second General Revaluation, when Ms. Mary Pollock owned the building valued at £50. The valuation remained unchanged through to the cancellation of the revaluation survey in 1972. The current owner possesses K.F. Lewis's original plans, which demonstrate that the general layout has not been significantly altered since construction, a fact confirmed by the 1980 Ordnance Survey map, which depicts the building in its current configuration with only the later modern single-storey flat-roof extension as an addition.