Hampstead Hall, 40 Baronscourt, Culmore Road, Londonderry, BT48 7RH

Hampstead Hall is a pleasing country villa erected in the early Victorian period, around 1850, in a restrained Georgian style. The building retains careful architectural detailing both externally and internally, with good proportions and well-preserved principal interiors.

The house is a two-storey, five-bay structure with a basement, finished in smooth render and colour wash. It has a hipped slate roof and is approached via a central fanlighted doorway on its south-facing entrance façade. The principal front features a fine six-panelled door flanked by three-quarter engaged Tuscan Doric columns set on stone blocking and supporting a cornice with modillions. Glazed screens flank the doorway, with upper parts divided into small square panes and solid panels below, matched by pilaster responds. The doorcase is set in recessed reveals with matching arch, approached by two broad sandstone steps. On the ground floor, two sliding sash windows with twelve panes flank the door on each side. The first floor has five sliding sash windows with nine panes each, positioned directly above the ground-floor openings. All window and door openings are well-proportioned with good relationship between solid and void. Windows are suspended on sandstone cills. There is no traditional cornice; instead, a wide deep cast iron gutter with ogee-shaped upper edge forms the cornice equivalent. The gutter is supported on decorative vertical supports spaced approximately 750 mm apart with fillet moulding beneath. The base of the wall has a chamfered sandstone plinth. Short and long painted sandstone quoins punctuate the façade.

The east and west elevations are three bays wide with similar windows to the principal façade. The gutter continues around both sides with decorative supports and running fillet, and returned quoins with a chamfered string course over rubble stone basement walls. The basement on the east side has three sliding sash windows with nine panes each, whilst the west side has windows with twelve panes. All basement windows are trimmed with red brick bonded to stonework.

The rear elevation features a semi-circular projecting bay rising two storeys, faced with exposed random rubble schist stonework. French windows occupy the ground floor of the bay, with a tall arched 21-pane sliding sash window above at stair landing level, both trimmed with similar red brick. Painted quoins return from the side elevations. The gutter curves handsomely around the bay supported on stubby cast iron corbel supports. A single cast iron downpipe drains the entire roof. The basement is not expressed on the rear.

The roof is hipped with natural blue slates, lead hips, and a short ridge broken by two plain rendered and coloured chimney stacks with simple caps. Brick garden walls abut the rear wall on each side.

Historically, a house has stood on this site since the early nineteenth century. The Ordnance Survey Map of 1832 shows an earlier house, then called Greenhaw, with less depth than the present structure and with a small squared back return and L-shaped outbuildings. In 1837 an Ordnance Survey Memoir records William K McClintock residing there. By the 1856 map, the house was called Hampstead and the outbuildings had been extended. The present owner believes the current house was rebuilt around 1850 with the earlier building dating from 1820. The property was owned from 1959 to 1979 by Mr Halliday, subsequently by Dr Duff, who later sold the land for housing development. The present owner acquired the house, gardens, and outbuildings in 1982 and has undertaken restoration to recover the building's architectural character and detailing.

The house originally sat in a large expanse of landscaped garden, but housing development has encroached significantly over the last thirty years and the avenue is gone, though the original gate piers remain. The much-reduced garden now includes a short avenue approach from one side and another from an adjacent housing road. The front garden is formally laid out with a central path to the door. The east garden is designed in Japanese style, whilst the west side features an Italianate manner with a sunken paved area at basement-viewing eye level. Steps descend from the rear court to the sunken stone-paved area and further steps lead to basement level.

The outbuildings are two-storey structures of random rubble stone with red brick trim, an arched gateway, and arched windows. Several windows have been repositioned to achieve symmetry. Only a narrow margin strip of ground surrounds the outer walls of these outbuildings before the adjacent housing development. During the Second World War, the land was occupied with military huts.