Collon House, Buncrana Road, Londonderry, BT48 8AE

Collon House is an Edwardian building on Buncrana Road in a vigorous Arts and Crafts style, with recent adaptations that harmonise with the circa 1900 renovation.

The house is a two-storey structure with multiple gables, half-timbered upper floors, steeply pitched roofs, and roughcast-finished walls colour-washed in Arts and Crafts style. The principal south-east elevation is five bays long. A projecting two-storey section with half-timbering at first floor and above contains the main entrance: a six-panelled door on the flank wall with a plain rectangular fanlight above, sheltered by a projecting slated canopy supported on timber brackets. The canopy returns across the gabled projection over the porch window and the shallow rectangular bay serving the main reception room. The porch window comprises six fixed panes, while the reception window has eight panes filled with lead lights.

At first floor, the first bay features two two-light sliding sash windows placed symmetrically, each with three panes horizontally divided in the lower sash and four panes in the upper. The next bay contains two two-light double-hung sash windows of similar design with a simple ten-pane sliding sash window above; the upper half of this breaks the eaves to form a gabled dormer. The following two bays are set further back at one-and-a-half storeys, with two single twelve-pane sliding sash windows at ground floor and above each a single small four-pane double-hung sash window, terminating in a gable. The gable of the middle bay has a ten-pane sliding sash window near the corner. The upper floors of the first three bays are half-timbered, extending into the gables and above the dormer, with the vertical half-timbering becoming diagonal or herring-bone pattern halfway up the gables. Below the reception and porch windows are two basement windows with their heads just appearing above ground level.

The north-west elevation is three bays wide and again features a projecting half-timbered gable at first floor thrust forward from the long wall of the principal reception room. In the angle formed is a small conservatory entered from the reception room. South of the conservatory is a tall narrow six-pane sliding sash window; above the conservatory a small two-pane sliding sash window sits under the eaves, with half-timbered wall treatment continuing around the flank of the projecting gable. At ground floor in the gable is a centre nine-pane double-hung sash window with horizontal astragals, flanked on either side by slightly narrower nine-pane sliding sash windows. Above, centred in the gable, is a two-light six-pane sliding sash window. The first floor walls are similarly treated in half-timbering as the principal gable.

The rear kitchen wing is two storeys high with similar treatment, though ground floor windows are positioned on the flanking walls. Between the dining room and kitchen wings a two-storey element has been recently erected, partially filling the angle while remaining in keeping with the original character. On the other side of the kitchen wing is a further larger two-storey extension, again in sympathy with the original, with minimal use of half-timbering at first floor; any banding appears as painted smooth rendering, well executed though sufficiently different in pattern from the original.

The roofs form intersecting planes in asbestos slates with plain ridges. The original chimneys have been retained, though they may be rebuilt in redbrick with oversailing courses.

The house sits on flat ground set well back from Buncrana Road, well concealed by fine mature trees, with a pleasant lawn to the south-west and a former vegetable garden to the north-west. Behind the house are former outbuildings and new garages. A group of stone outbuildings is neatly arranged around three sides of a farmyard court with segmented arched openings and a central two-storey gabled barn, cut off from the house by a random rubble stone wall.

According to the 1830 Ordnance Survey map (1st Edition, Londonderry 13), a house of similar outline occupied this site previously. The present house was occupied for more than six decades of the twentieth century by the Hatrick family. St Columb's College purchased the property in the early 1960s, and from then until the end of the 1980s the Casey family occupied it. In 1994 the house was adapted to accommodate teaching staff of the College. The house was probably extensively renovated around 1900; the architectural style suggests Albert Forman as the architect, though R.E. Buchanan was undertaking similar work at this time. The 1994 adaptation was designed by F.M. Corr & Associates with Kennedy as builder.