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

A two-bay, three-storey-with-attic mid-terraced building built in 1886 and located on the east side of Lodge Road in Coleraine town centre. Originally a dwelling, it is now used as commercial premises. The building retains typical mid-Victorian features despite extensive remodelling of its original interior layout and forms part of an important and prominent terrace in the heart of Coleraine town centre, representing some of the best-preserved examples of mid-to-late-nineteenth-century terraced architecture in the town.

The building is square on plan with a two-storey return to the rear and a modern extension. The roof is pitched with natural slate and blue-black angled ridge tiles, with a rendered chimneystack. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods sit on moulded eaves. The walling is painted smooth render with a platband under the eaves and a continuous sill course to the first floor.

Windows throughout are 1/1 timber sash with horns, set in stop-end chamfered reveals with projecting painted sills. The principal southwest-facing elevation is three openings wide at each floor. The ground floor entrance on the right comprises a bolection-moulded four-panel timber door with a plain transom light in a moulded reveal, accessed by a tiled step. The door is flanked by panelled pilasters with decorative console brackets supporting a corniced canopy.

The building is set back from the street with a paved yard to the front, enclosed by hedges and a rendered wall with painted coping and square piers with caps. A tarmacadamed alley to the northwest and southeast of the terrace leads to a car park to the east.

The outbuilding to the rear is painted roughcast render with a platband under the eaves, slated roof with modern skylights to the ridge, and rendered chimneystack. The northeast elevation has two replacement windows at first floor over a large square-headed opening with modern timber-sheeted gates.

Historical Context

The house dates from 1886 and is part of a development of sixteen houses built between approximately 1859 and 1888 for Coleraine's rising middle classes. The terrace is first shown in its complete form on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1904, and the current house was among the last in the terrace to be built, appearing in valuation records in 1886 as a vacant, newly-built dwelling. The terrace was considered to occupy the best, because sunniest, side of Lodge Road and was occupied largely by middle-class merchants and professionals who kept at least one servant.

Lodge Road was laid out between 1833 and 1845, first appearing on O'Hagan's map of Coleraine dated 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 is said to have begun 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 and occupied by Frances B Louden in 1888, leased from James McMullen who was most likely the developer. At the time of the 1911 census, the occupier was recorded as Matthew Given, director of a shirt collar factory, who lived with his sister and four adult children, his son also a manager in the factory. The house remained in the Given family until at least the 1950s.

Valuer's notes from the 1930s record the accommodation as: on the ground floor, reception, kitchen, scullery and pantry; on the first floor, one reception, two bedrooms, bathroom; on the second floor, two bedrooms; and on the third floor, two attic bedrooms. The house had water laid on and gas lighting at this time. A plan from this period shows the house, return and coal house in the yard and an outbuilding at the bottom of the yard that was cobbled and used partly as a garage and partly as a tool house, which still remains.

The house was listed in 1977 and converted to architect's offices in the mid-1980s. Renovations and extension took place in 1990, enclosing the rear yard and merging the original outbuilding into the main house.