80 Culmore Point Road, Londonderry, BT48 8JW

These are a group of model semi-detached cottages built in the late 1860s by The Honourable The Irish Society, intended as prototypes for similar dwellings. Some original features and detailing remain, demonstrating their interest. Numbers 76 to 86 form three pairs of semi-detached one-and-a-half-storey cottages situated fronting onto the River Foyle, immediately north of Culmore Point, and set back a short distance from the water’s edge by a concrete embankment. Each cottage has a front and rear garden.

The cottages are rendered with smooth white surfaces. Each has a pitched roof with a projecting porch and a wide, square-proportioned ground floor window. Above this window is a coloured hood moulding, and centrally placed dormer windows are set above the roofline. A plaster frieze runs beneath the gutters, supported by widely spaced cast iron decorative brackets, and rainwater gutters flow into a centrally placed decorative cast iron trunkhead with a single downpipe between the two dwellings, secured by decorative brackets. The roof is slate with a central chimney between the dwellings, altered to feature rustic brickwork and four chimney pots from original Tudor-style chimneys. The rear has gable roofs with a lean-to extension. The gable walls are plastered, and the porch and dormer windows are timber-clad with decorative bargeboards and a pointed timber finial. One door is sheeted, and the windows are divided into 12 equal panes with top-hung opening lights at the head. The dormer windows are triangular, pointed, with a centre diamond pane. Each gable features a ground floor bedroom window and a centrally placed first-floor window.

The Culmore estate reverted to the Irish Society in 1860. Richard Williamson, appointed Irish Society surveyor, based his plans and elevations on those of Henry Roberts (1803-76), who had previously designed housing for the Society to improve the living conditions of the working class. Construction took place between 1863 and 1864. The cottages are now under individual ownership. An Ordnance Survey map from 1853 shows a terrace on this site named 'Kings Row'.