7 West End Park, Londonderry

No. 7 West End Park is a late-Victorian mid-terrace two-bay three-storey red brick townhouse built in 1896, designed in a Tudor or Arts and Crafts style. It was likely designed by Joseph Ballantine, a local architect and builder who owned the whole group of houses numbered 1 to 7 and who also had business premises on the Strand Road. The house forms part of a continuous terrace of twenty-two similar three-storey dwellings lining the west side of West End Park, a street aligned north to south on the west side of the River Foyle at the southern end of Lone Moor Road. Numbers 1 to 7 were the first phase of the terrace, all completed in 1896 in a distinctive Tudor style, while numbers 8 to 22 were built in a simpler Victorian manner between 1896 and 1905. The group of seven houses shares group value and stands out clearly from the remainder of the terrace by virtue of its richer detailing, character and style.

The plan is rectangular with a large projecting rear return. The building sits on an elevated site, set back from the pavement behind a low rendered and painted boundary wall, with a small front garden and a flight of steps rising to the entrance.

The principal east-facing elevation is built in red brick laid in English Garden Wall Bond. The roofline is a pitched natural slate roof running continuously with No. 6, fitted with modern rooflights. A large double red brick chimney stack with six clay pots is shared with No. 8. The eaves detail includes a timber fascia and soffit with exposed rafter tails, half-round uPVC guttering discharging to a square uPVC downpipe.

The window arrangement on the east elevation centres on a two-storey canted bay window rising from the ground to first floor level, with painted rendered bands to the window heads and painted rendered surrounds to the bay windows, and a painted sill course to the first-floor windows. The glazing in the canted bay at ground and first floor level consists of 1/2 timber sliding sash windows. At first floor level, above the entrance doorway, there is a further 1/2 timber sliding sash window of the same type. At second floor level, a slightly cantilevered box window with a pedimented head 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 6/2 timber sliding sash window. The second floor level as a whole has half-timber treatment supported on small carved timber corbel brackets, continuing the arrangement seen on the adjacent No. 2. A 1/1 horizontally hung timber sliding sash window is also present at second floor level. The entrance doorway has a square-headed opening approached by four steps and retains an original raised-and-fielded pair of half-leaf full-height painted timber doors. The north and south sides are adjoined to Nos. 8 and 6 West End Park respectively.

The rear west elevation is three storeys, finished in smooth rendered painted render, with a two-storey rear return built at half-landing height. It shares a gable with No. 6. A red brick outbuilding extends to the rear boundary wall, with a corrugated pitched roof and vertically sheeted double doors opening onto a rear passageway leading to Eastway Gardens. The fenestration to the rear elevation and rear return is irregular throughout, with all windows being multi-pane timber casements. The rear roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, continuing to the rear return. A large red brick shared chimney stack rises from the south side, centred on the ridge, with six buff clay pots. uPVC rainwater goods are used throughout the rear.

Internally, a census building return of 1911 recorded No. 7 as a first-class dwelling comprising twelve rooms.

West End Park was laid out as part of a broader phase of residential development at the end of the 19th century that also included red brick terraces at Stanley's Walk, Laburnum Terrace and Elmwood Terrace. The street itself lies above the Lone Moor Road, which was in existence from at least the late 17th century. Joseph Ballantine, the likely architect and owner of Nos. 1 to 7, is also credited with the similar Arts and Crafts red brick terrace at St. Columb's Court, which shares the same Tudor character. The terrace was first depicted on the Annual Revisions map of circa 1873 to 1910, on which a proposed plan for the terrace along its current layout was already marked.

No. 7 was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1899, with a rateable value of £22, and its first recorded occupant was Thomas Lipsett, a travelling commercial trader. By 1911 the house was occupied by Joseph Lynch, a grocer and seed merchant. Occupants changed frequently over the following three decades. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the rateable value rose to £26. From 1942 the property was occupied by Thomas Houston, who continued to reside there until at least the 1970s. By the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value stood at £32. The terrace as a whole was home to many of the city's professional and mercantile elite.

In 1970, the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide to Derry described Nos. 1 to 7 West End Park as "rather massive in appearance, having strong modelled gables over the projecting bays finished in half-timbered work." Only Nos. 1 to 7 were listed in 1979. The architectural historian Calley described the group as having "particularly wide and bold canted bays which are emphasised with wide smooth-rendered bands and surrounds," and characterised the attic storey as "a massive conglomeration of half-timberwork giving the charming appearance of an Elizabethan village perched on an Edwardian terrace." In 1984 No. 7 underwent a renovation that included the reconstruction of its red brick chimney stack and the reslating of its roof.