3 West End Park, Londonderry

No. 3 West End Park is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey Tudor-style and Arts and Crafts red brick townhouse, built in 1896. It forms part of a terrace row of twenty-two similar three-storey dwellings lining the west side of West End Park, a street running north to south on the west side of the River Foyle at the southern end of Lone Moor Road. The house is likely to have been designed by Joseph Ballantine, a local architect and builder who owned Nos. 1–7 West End Park and who also designed the similar Arts and Crafts red brick terrace at St. Columb's Court, which shares the same Tudor character. No. 3 is a fine and well-preserved example of its type, retaining much of its original external historic detailing, and sits within a group of seven stylistically distinctive townhouses (Nos. 1–7) that stand apart from the plainer Victorian character of Nos. 8–22, which were completed between 1896 and 1905.

The plan is rectangular with a large projecting rear return. The principal elevation faces east onto West End Park and is set behind a low rendered painted boundary wall with painted metal railings above, approached by a flight of steps to the entrance.

The east elevation is finished in red brick laid in English Garden Wall Bond. Windows are square-headed with a two-storey canted bay window rising from ground to first floor level. At second floor level, a slightly cantilevered box pedimented window rests on the canted bay below, supported by large timber brackets on either side. The pediment features half-timber treatment with a plain painted timber fascia board and a coupled 6/2 timber sliding sash window. The second floor level as a whole has half-timber treatment supported on small carved timber corbel brackets, which continue across to No. 2. The entrance doorway has a square-headed opening reached by four steps, and contains an original raised-and-fielded pair of half-leaf full-height painted timber doors. All windows on the front elevation are timber sliding sashes: 1/2 sliding sashes to the canted bay at ground and first floor levels, the same type to the first floor window over the main entrance, and a 4/4 horizontally hung timber sliding sash at second floor level. Painted rendered bands run along the ground and first floor window heads, with a painted rendered surround to the canted bay windows and a painted sill course to the first floor windows.

The roof is pitched with natural slate, continuous with No. 2 West End Park, and is finished with a timber fascia and soffit with exposed rafter tails and half-round uPVC guttering discharging to a circular uPVC downpipe. Modern roof lights are present. A large red brick chimney stack with eleven terracotta clay pots is shared with No. 4 West End Park, and rises from the south side, centred on the ridge.

The north and south sides adjoin the neighbouring properties, Nos. 2 and 4 West End Park. The west elevation to the rear is three storeys in red brick, with a half gable shared with No. 2. A three-storey red brick rear return steps down to a single-storey extension with a corrugated steel flat roof, which extends to the boundary wall and opens out onto a rear passageway leading to Eastway Gardens. The fenestration pattern on the rear elevation and rear return is irregular, and all windows here are uPVC casements. The main roof and rear return both have pitched natural slate roofs with black clay ridge tiles. uPVC rainwater goods are used throughout the rear.

The terrace at West End Park was laid out between 1896 and 1905, above the Lone Moor Road, which was in existence from at least the late 17th century. It formed part of the wider development of housing in the area at the end of the 19th century that also saw the creation of red brick terraces at Stanley's Walk, Laburnum Terrace, and Elmwood Terrace. The proposed layout for the terrace was first depicted on the Annual Revisions map of circa 1873–1910. Nos. 1–7, in their Tudor style, were the first phase to be completed; the remaining Nos. 8–22 followed in a simpler Victorian manner.

The terrace was home to many of the city's professional and mercantile elite. No. 3 was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1898 with a rateable value of £25, and its first recorded occupant was a Ms. Mary Anne Taylor. By the 1911 census, the house had passed to William Edward Baker, a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, who described it in the census building return as a first-class dwelling consisting of 13 rooms. By the 1930s the house was occupied by a Mr. John Logue, and in 1939 it passed to a Mr. James Lecky. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the rateable value was increased to £35. A Mr. Patrick J. Donnell occupied the house in 1964, and by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) the rateable value had been further raised to £40.

In 1970, the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide for Derry described Nos. 1–7 West End Park as "rather massive in appearance, having strong modelled gables over the projecting bays finished in half-timbered work." Calley later observed that Nos. 1–7 "have particularly wide and bold canted bays which are emphasised with wide smooth-rendered bands and surrounds," and that "the attic storey is a massive conglomeration of half-timberwork giving the charming appearance of an Elizabethan village perched on an Edwardian terrace." Only Nos. 1–7 West End Park were listed in 1979.

Around 1987, No. 3 underwent a renovation that included the repointing of brickwork to its front and rear elevations and the reslating of its roof in natural slate. The rear elevation and rear return now have uPVC casement windows, which detract from the building's overall character.

No. 3 West End Park has architectural interest for its style, proportion, ornamentation, and plan form, as well as group value as part of the distinctive run of Nos. 1–7. It also has historical interest for its age, its authenticity, the likely authorship of Joseph Ballantine, and its local importance as part of the late 19th-century development of this part of Londonderry.