5 West End Park, Londonderry

No. 5 West End Park is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey Tudor-style and Arts and Crafts red brick townhouse, built in 1896 and likely designed by Joseph Ballantine, a local architect and builder who owned Nos. 1–7 West End Park and also had business premises on the Strand Road. It forms part of a terrace of twenty-two three-storey red brick dwellings lining the west side of West End Park, a street aligned north–south on the west side of the River Foyle at the southern end of Lone Moor Road, on an elevated site in the Edenballymore townland.

The house is rectangular in plan with a projecting rear return. Its principal elevation faces east onto West End Park, set back from the pavement behind a low rendered and painted boundary wall with a coping stone running to the canted bay window and to the right side of the entrance doorway.

The east elevation is built in red brick laid in English Garden Wall Bond. The main external features include a two-storey canted bay window rising from ground to first floor level, with painted rendered bands to the window heads and painted rendered surrounds, and a painted sill course to the first-floor windows. At second floor level, a slightly cantilevered box window with a pedimented head sits under a half-hipped roof shared with the neighbouring No. 6, resting on the canted bay below and supported by large timber brackets to either side. The pediment has half-timber treatment with a plain wide painted timber fascia board finish, and contains 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 that run continuously with No. 4. All windows are timber sliding sashes: 1/2 sliding sashes to the canted bay on ground and first floors, and the same type to the first floor window above the main entrance door; a 1/1 horizontally hung timber sliding sash window sits at second floor level.

The entrance doorway is square-headed, one step up from the pavement, and retains an original raised-and-fielded three-panel pair of half-leaf full-height painted timber doors — a notably intact historic detail.

The roof is a pitched natural slate covering, continuous with No. 4, with black clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the rear return. There is a large rendered chimney stack with eleven terracotta or buff clay pots shared with No. 6, rising from the south side of the main roof and centred on the ridge, as well as a smaller red brick chimney stack rising from the shared gable end of the rear return, also centred on the ridge. The roof has modern rooflights. The eaves have a timber fascia and soffit with exposed rafter tails, moulded guttering discharging to cast-iron downpipes, and cast-iron rainwater goods throughout.

The north and south sides adjoin Nos. 4 and 6 West End Park respectively. The west rear elevation is three storeys of red brick, with a three-storey rear return built at half-landing height. The rear elevation has a 6/3 timber sliding sash window to the second floor and a matching window to the first floor of the rear return. A detached red brick outbuilding abuts the rear boundary wall, with a corrugated steel pitched roof, a large up-and-over garage door facing onto the rear passageway, and a vertically sheeted timber door to its right.

West End Park was laid out between 1896 and 1905 above Lone Moor Road, which was in existence from at least the late 17th century. The terrace was part of a wider phase of red brick terrace development in the area at the end of the 19th century, which also produced Stanley's Walk, Laburnum Terrace and Elmwood Terrace, and was home to many of the city's professional and mercantile elite. The terrace was erected in phases: Nos. 1–7, in the Tudor style, were completed first, while Nos. 8–22 were built in a simpler Victorian manner between 1896 and 1905. Although the architect is not confirmed with certainty, the Annual Revisions record that Nos. 1–7 were owned by Joseph Ballantine, and it is likely he also designed them; he had previously designed the similar Arts and Crafts red brick terrace at St. Columb's Court, which shares the same Tudor character.

No. 5 was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1899, with a rateable value set at £22. Its first recorded occupant was George F. Crook, a local draper with business premises on Waterloo Street. The 1911 census building return described it as a first-class dwelling consisting of twelve rooms. By the 1930s the house had passed to a Mr. Laurence Hogan and its rateable value had risen to £29 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57). By the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) it was occupied by a Mr. Patrick J. Hughes and its value had risen further to £35.

The 1970 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide to 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." Architectural historian D. Calley later wrote that Nos. 1–7 "have particularly wide and bold canted bays which are emphasised with wide smooth-rendered bands and surrounds … 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. The terrace was first depicted on the Annual Revisions map of circa 1873–1910, on which a proposed plan for the terrace along its current layout was already marked.

In 1988–89 No. 5 underwent a renovation that included the reslating of its roof in natural slate and the repointing of its exterior brickwork.

No. 5 is a fine example of its type, retaining much of its original external historic detailing. Together with Nos. 1–7, it forms a group of seven townhouses that are visually distinctive in style compared with the less elaborately detailed Victorian character of Nos. 8–22, and the group as a whole makes a significant contribution to the character of the local area.