1 West End Park, Londonderry

1 West End Park, Londonderry

This is an end-of-terrace, two-bay, three-storey-over-basement townhouse built in 1896, likely designed by Joseph Ballantine, a local architect and builder who was active in late-19th-century Londonderry and who owned the first seven houses in the row. The building is Tudor in style, constructed in red brick with half-timbering, and forms the first and most architecturally distinctive house in a terrace of twenty-two properties lining the west side of West End Park — a street running north to south on the west bank of the River Foyle, at the southern end of Lone Moor Road. Nos. 1–7 were built first, between 1896 and the early 1900s, in this Tudor-inflected Arts and Crafts manner, while nos. 8–22 were completed in a plainer Victorian style up to 1905. The seven earlier houses share strong group value and are notably distinctive in character compared to the rest of the terrace.

The building is rectangular on plan with a large projecting rear return. It sits on an elevated site, set back from the pavement behind a low rendered unpainted boundary wall with decorative metal railings. The principal entrance, unusually for a terrace house, faces north rather than onto the street, and is reached via a flight of steps approached from the east side on West End Park.

The roof is a pitched natural slate construction with black clay ridge tiles, continuous across the main roof and the rear return. The rear return has a small modern rooflight on the south side of its double pitch. A large shared red brick chimney stack rises from the south side, centred on the ridge, with eleven terracotta clay pots, shared with No. 2 West End Park. The roof has a timber fascia and soffit with exposed rafter tails, and half-round uPVC guttering discharging to circular uPVC downpipes. uPVC rainwater goods are used throughout.

The east elevation, which faces onto West End Park, is finished in red brick laid in English Garden Wall Bond, with rock-faced block-and-sneck sandstone at basement level, accessed via a short flight of steps from street level. A three-storey canted bay window rises from basement level through to first floor level. Above this, at second floor level, a slightly cantilevered box window with a pediment rests on top of the canted bay, 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-over-2 timber sliding sash window. The second floor as a whole has half-timber treatment, supported on small carved timber corbel brackets that continue around the corner onto the north elevation. Fenestration on the east elevation includes timber painted casement windows to the canted bay at basement level; 1-over-2 timber sliding sash windows to the canted bay at ground and first floor levels; a 1-over-1 horizontally hung timber sliding sash at second floor level; and a blind red brick window at ground floor level to the left of the canted bay, with a 1-over-2 timber sliding sash to the first floor above it. Painted rendered bands run across the elevation at basement, ground, first and second floor window head levels, with painted rendered surrounds to the canted bay window and a painted sill-course to ground and first floor windows.

The north elevation faces onto a small urban green area with allocated vegetable allotments. At basement level the finish is sandstone, with red brick above. The second floor has half-timber treatment supported on small carved timber corbel brackets. Three 6-over-2 timber sliding sash windows with pediments occupy the right side of the second floor, each pediment featuring half-timber treatment and a plain wide painted timber fascia board finish. The basement and ground floor bays are slightly projected with a shallow lean-to roof finished in interlocking profiled concrete tiles. Centred on the elevation at ground floor level, directly above the basement entrance doorway, is a large projecting Edwardian-style enclosed timber-framed entrance porch with glazed and timber double doors, glazed lights, and shouldered fanlights to each side, finished with a frieze and dentilled cornice above and a felt roof. The entrance itself is accessed via a flight of steps approached from the east. All windows on this elevation are square-headed. Fenestration includes paired casement windows to each side of the entrance porch at basement level; paired 1-over-2 timber sliding sash windows at ground floor level to either side of the porch; and at first floor level, paired 1-over-2 timber sliding sash windows to the left and right of a single timber casement window centred on the elevation.

The west elevation at the rear is three storeys high at the gable end, smooth-rendered and unpainted. It has timber casement windows at ground and first floor levels, and two further timber casement windows at half-landing height. There is a step in the gable wall to the left of the windows, which contains a fire brace with a flue and clay pot above, rising to the slate roof off-centre from the ridge. A small rear garden steps upward to a high blockwork boundary wall.

Architecturally, the building is notable for the boldness of its canted bays, which are emphasised by wide smooth-rendered bands and surrounds, and for the massing of half-timbering at the upper storey — described in 1970 by the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society as presenting the appearance of an Elizabethan village perched atop an Edwardian terrace. Despite the loss of some original sash windows, a significant amount of historic internal and external fabric survives.

The terrace was laid out as part of a wider programme of housing development in Londonderry at the end of the 19th century, which also included red brick terraces at Stanley's Walk, Laburnum Terrace, and Elmwood Terrace. Lone Moor Road, above which the terrace sits, was in existence from at least the late 17th century. The terrace is first depicted on the Annual Revisions map of circa 1873–1910, which shows a proposed plan for the row along its current layout. Joseph Ballantine, identified in the Annual Revisions as the owner of nos. 1–7, is the likely architect of the whole terrace. He also designed the similarly styled Arts and Crafts red brick terrace at St. Columb's Court, which shares the same Tudor character.

No. 1 was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1898, with a rateable value of £25. Its first occupant was Patrick O'Kane, a local wine merchant and publican with premises on Foyle Street. The 1901 census described the building as a first-class dwelling comprising twelve rooms, with a coal house as its sole outbuilding. By the 1911 census, the house had passed to Robert John Skinner, a gas engineer and manager of the local gasworks. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value was raised to £37, and by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) it had been further increased to £40. From at least 1956 until at least 1972, the house was occupied by a Mr G. Glover. Only nos. 1–7 West End Park were listed in 1979. At the time of the Second Survey, No. 1 was in use as a private office, and this remains its current use.