Dunruadh, 68 Culmore Road, Londonderry, BT48 8JB

Dunruadh is a large two-storey house with attic built in 1898 in the Arts and Crafts Style, situated on a hillside overlooking the Foyle Bridge at Culmore Road, Londonderry. It was designed by a Cornish architect commissioned by the Welch Brothers, owners of the shirtmaking firm Welch & Margetson in Derry City. The house remained in the family until 1954, when it was sold to a factory manager named Laurie. The present owners acquired the property in 1976.

The main entrance elevation faces due east towards the River Foyle and is dominated by a projecting two-storey entrance porch, approximately 2 metres deep, which terminates as a gable at first floor level. The porch is finished in white render and features panelled, varnished timber entrance doors flanked by two varnished timber Doric columns at the head of a flight of four stone steps. The ground floor is built in stretcher bond smooth red bricks (Lagan Vale), while the first floor is rendered in white wet dash with red terracotta tiles. The roof is covered in Westmorland green slates with projecting white timber dormer windows and barges. To the north of the porch, the roof line continues into the attic before dropping steeply to a modern extension. South of the porch, a large brick chimney stack projects from the façade and is rendered in a similar colour to the brickwork for the storey height it projects above the eaves line, possibly a modern repair. This section of the façade is tile-hung at first floor and terminated at eaves level with a dormer above. Further to the north, the ground floor extends to form a conservatory with a hipped red tile roof.

The north elevation features tiles above first floor level and is gabled, with a venetian window in the attic and two three-pane casements on the first floor. The conservatory projects approximately 4 metres and is almost half the width of the façade. A bay window at the rear corner, angled at 45 degrees to the façade, is similarly detailed to the conservatory.

The rear or west elevation is tile-hung at first floor. A gabled bay projects approximately 1 metre from the façade at the north end. A flat-roofed rectangular bay at ground level has one four-pane casement above and a two-pane casement in the attic. A three-pane dormer projects to the south with two-pane casements aligning below. The north elevation of the original building consists of a long roof in Westmorland slate dropping almost to first floor level with two projecting dormers.

The entrance space is dramatically handled and features interesting exterior detailing characteristic of the Arts and Crafts Style, though the historical character of the building has been reduced by modern extensions. The original spaces beyond the entrance hall, while well-preserved, are not of the same drama and inventiveness as comparable houses in the style.

During the early 1980s, the owners carried out extensions to the property. A modern single-storey kitchen extension in similar materials but with different roof pitch projects approximately 6 metres into the garden from the rear elevation. This extension partly obscures the north façade and joins onto a two-storey existing shed with boiler chimney in brick; the extension itself is smooth-rendered and painted white, with slates at low pitch. A further modern single-storey extension extends from the west elevation.

In 1982, 1½ acres of garden land, including tennis courts, were compulsorily purchased to provide an access road from the west for the new Foyle Bridge.