6 West End Park, Londonderry

No. 6 West End Park is a late Victorian mid-terrace townhouse built in 1896, designed in a Tudor-inspired Arts and Crafts style. It forms part of a continuous terrace of twenty-two three-storey red brick houses lining the west side of West End Park, a north-south street on the west side of the River Foyle at the southern end of Lone Moor Road, Londonderry. The house was almost certainly designed by Joseph Ballantine, a local architect and builder who owned Nos 1–7 of the terrace and who had business premises on the Strand Road. Ballantine is also associated with the similar Arts and Crafts red brick terrace at St. Columb's Court, which shares the same Tudor character.

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. Its principal elevation faces east onto West End Park, set slightly back from the pavement behind a low rendered and painted boundary wall that runs to the canted bay window.

The east-facing front elevation is built in red brick laid in English Garden Wall Bond. The most striking feature is a two-storey canted bay window rising from ground to first floor level, with painted rendered bands to the window heads and a painted rendered surround, and a painted sill course to the first floor windows. Above the bay, at second floor level, a slightly cantilevered box window with a pedimented surround projects outward under a half-hipped roof that is shared with the neighbouring No. 5. This upper window rests on the canted bay below and is supported by large timber brackets to either side. The pediment is treated with half-timbering and finished with a plain wide painted timber fascia board, and contains a coupled half-timber casement window. The second floor level more broadly has half-timber treatment, carried on small carved timber corbel brackets that run continuously with No. 7.

All windows are timber casements in a half-style configuration: to the canted bay on ground and first floors, to the first floor window above the main entrance door, and a single casement at second floor level. The square-headed entrance doorway is 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 particularly significant survival. Replacement casement windows elsewhere detract from the overall historic character.

The roofline is shared and continuous with No. 7. Natural slate covers the front slope and artificial replacement slate the rear slope, with a pitched profile and black clay ridge tiles. A large shared red brick chimney stack rises from the north side of the main roof, centred on the ridge, with terracotta and buff clay pots. A smaller rendered chimney stack rises from the shared gable end of the rear return, with an exposed brick cornice and two buff clay pots. The timber fascia and soffit have exposed rafter tails. Rainwater goods throughout are half-round uPVC guttering discharging to circular uPVC downpipes.

The rear west elevation is three storeys in height, finished in smooth unpainted render, with a three-storey rear return built at half-landing height. Timber casement windows serve the rear elevation and return. A rear boundary wall contains a vertically sheeted timber door opening onto a rear passageway leading to Eastway Gardens. The north and south sides adjoin No. 5 and No. 7 West End Park respectively.

Nos 1–7 West End Park were the first phase of the terrace, completed from 1896, and are notably more richly detailed than Nos 8–22, which were built in a simpler Victorian manner between 1896 and 1905. A 1970 architectural survey described Nos 1–7 as "rather massive in appearance, having strong modelled gables over the projecting bays finished in half-timbered work." A later assessment elaborated that the group has "particularly wide and bold canted bays which are emphasised with wide smooth-rendered bands and surrounds," with the attic storey described as "a massive conglomeration of half-timberwork giving the charming appearance of an Elizabethan village perched on an Edwardian terrace." The terrace was part of a broader phase of late 19th century housing development in the area that also produced red brick terraces at Stanley's Walk, Laburnum Terrace and Elmwood Terrace. The area lies above Lone Moor Road, which was in existence from at least the late 17th century.

No. 6 West End Park was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1899, when its rateable value was set at £22. Its first recorded occupant was George Shott, a surveyor to the Board of Trade. By 1911 the house had passed to John F. Robinson, a local bank clerk, and the census building return for that year described it as a first-class dwelling consisting of twelve rooms. The house changed hands frequently in subsequent decades. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the rateable value was raised to £26, and by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) it had risen further to £32. From 1949 until at least the end of that second revaluation period the house was occupied by a Mr. Frances McCarroll. Nos 1–7 West End Park were first listed in 1979. In 1984 the house underwent a renovation that included the reslating of the roof. The terrace was first depicted on the Annual Revisions map of circa 1873–1910, on which a proposed plan for the terrace was marked along its current layout.

No. 6 West End Park is a fine and largely intact example of its type, retaining significant external historic detailing — most notably the original entrance doors — and forms part of a group of seven houses, Nos 1–7, which together have considerable group value and contribute distinctively to the character of the local area.