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

A two-bay, two-storey-with-attic mid-terrace townhouse built circa 1880 to designs by J & W Kirkpatrick, located on the north side of Lodge Road in Coleraine town centre. The building is square on plan with a two-storey canted bay and two-storey return to rear.

The roof is mansard with natural slate, blue and black angled ridge tiles, and fish-scale tiles; the canted bay has a slate roof with leaded hips and ridges. A red-brick chimneystack rises through the roof. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods sit on a projecting eaves course. The walling is painted smooth render on a contrasting plinth with a platband between floors and a moulded eaves cornice.

Windows are segmental-headed replacement 1/1 timber sashes with horns and projecting painted sills. Ground-floor windows of the canted bay are square-headed with a continuous sill course. Two gabled dormers to the attic contain 1/1 round-headed windows in timber frames with carved timber brackets under the eaves.

The principal elevation faces southwest, with a two-storey canted bay at the left (one window to each facet) and an entrance door to the ground floor right, with a window over at first-floor level. The door is a replacement bolection-moulded four-panelled timber door in a segmental-headed doorcase with panelled sidelights and a plain transom light, accessed via a single stone step.

The northwest elevation is abutted by an adjoining building. The northeast (rear) elevation features a wall-head gabled dormer with a replacement timber window to the right at attic level, and a two-storey roughcast-rendered return at the left with two uPVC windows at first floor. The southeast elevation is abutted by an adjoining building.

The building is set back from the road behind a lawned front garden with modern brick paving to the house and a bitumac path to the entrance. The garden is bounded by mature hedges and modern timber fencing with a replacement cast-iron latch-gate. To the northeast, a two-storey roughcast-rendered flat-roof outbuilding with modern modifications encloses the rear yard; it has enlarged uPVC window insertions at ground and first floor and a modern four-panelled timber door to the ground floor right. A concrete communal yard with a gravelled parking area lies beyond.

The terrace was the only known work by local architects and brothers J & W Kirkpatrick of Blindgate Street, Coleraine. Dunedin Terrace, comprising seven houses, was entered into valuation records in 1880, given its name in 1881, and first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1904. The terrace was considered to occupy the best and sunniest side of Lodge Road 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 and is first shown on O'Hagan's map of Coleraine dated 1845. It 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; this boom is said to have begun in the late 1850s when Thomas Boyd built Waterford Terrace at the Coleraine end of Lodge Road.

The first recorded occupier was Oliver H Liken in 1881, possibly the landlord and developer of the terrace, followed by Richard Griffith in 1883. The house, office, yard and small garden were initially valued at £22, reduced to £20 in 1887. Richard Griffith died in 1892, leaving bequests to the Presbyterian Church, the Church of Ireland and the Methodists. The house passed to Mary Griffith in 1893, who lived there with her widowed brother and employed a domestic servant (recorded in the 1901 census). W S Roberts occupied the house in 1909, though it was vacant at the 1911 census. By 1912 James Galloway, a Scottish shipping agent formerly at number 64, lived in the house with his wife, mother and two children, employing a domestic servant. Dunedin Terrace was revalued in 1912 at £18 10 shillings; valuer's notes of this period show a plan with a two-storey rear extension and outbuildings, all still present.

Subsequent occupiers included Oliver H Liken (1914), John Oliver (1924), and Samuel Black (1926), a retired farmer who died in 1933. Valuer's notes from the 1930s record accommodation of a reception, kitchen, scullery and pantry on the ground floor; two bedrooms, a bathroom, WC and reception on the first floor; and three bedrooms on the second floor. The houses were said to have cost £1400 each to build, had gas lighting, and the rear outbuilding was cobbled inside. Samuel Elder took over in 1947, followed by Florence I Shaw in 1952. After listing in 1977, renovations took place in the 1980s when the house was divided into flats, with further renovations circa 2000.

The building retains much of its original detailing despite alterations and refurbishments, and remains a well-preserved example of a typical late-Victorian terraced townhouse. Dunedin Terrace is one of the best-preserved representative examples of late-nineteenth-century terraced architecture in Coleraine, and number 68 has group value with the other listed buildings in the terrace, being of significant local interest.