Ballyarnett House, Racecourse Road, Londonderry, BT48 8NG

Ballyarnett House is an imposing neo-Georgian style house built around 1860, incorporating a former late 17th century single storey cottage. The building sits on rising ground of 1.25 hectares above the Racecourse Road, approached by a winding avenue through green pasture. The main structure is 2½ storeys, three bays wide, deeper in plan than its width, with a single storey side return of four bays on the north east side.

The south east entrance façade is symmetrically composed with a central fanlighted panelled door flanked by narrow sidelights and sheltered by a flat roofed portico supported on Roman Doric columns. On either side are tripartite sliding sash windows. The first floor features 12 pane sliding sash windows centrally placed over the openings below. The second floor comprises a series of dormers to front and rear, each with nine pane sliding sash windows. Three dormers are centrally placed on the main south east façade. The south facing tripartite windows have replaced single storey canted bays. All external walls are smooth rendered and colour washed with quoins and plinth, finished with a decorative panelled frieze and pairs of consoles under the eaves overhang.

The south west façade is four bays wide with widely spaced 12 pane sliding sash windows. The north east façade has irregularly spaced and variously sized sliding sash windows, with double windows serving the staircase landing. From this side extends the single storey return, one room deep, which contains the original 17th century cottage. This return has its own separate entrance door under a shallow flat roofed portico and windows are widely spaced to match the main house detailing. The return terminates in a gable end with a single pedestrian door and garage door. The north west or rear façade of the main block is three bays wide with 12 pane sliding sash windows at ground and first floor and three dormers above.

The natural slated roof, recently renewed, presents a pitched roof all round with a lesser span pitched roof over a central corridor, resulting in some internal downpipes which originally supplied cisterns on the second floor. Four chimney stacks with tall pots rise from the roof. The present owner has added a series of Velux type rooflights.

The entrance to the avenue features metal gates, metal piers and curving railings in Federal and Empire style.

The interior retains good quality window, fireplace and staircase fittings. All plasterwork was renewed during comprehensive refurbishment approximately five years ago.

The house was probably enlarged and rebuilt by the Corscadden family around 1860, designed by architect Fitzgibbon Louch, whose offices were in Sackville Street. The Corscadden family were involved in the Derry Shipping Trade from 1815 and held property in Sackville Street and Strand Road. According to Dean's Gate Lodges of Ulster, the demesne previously belonged to the Gallaghers before passing to Corscadden. Griffiths Valuation of 1858 records the owner as Corscadden with a valuation of £28. The Ordnance Survey map of 1830 shows a building approximately where the north east return now stands, with outbuildings to the south and north.

A gate lodge existed on the property before 1970 but has since been demolished.

The present owner purchased the house and three acres in the early 1990s from a Quigley, who had acquired the property from Corscadden. During refurbishment works, the architect Sean Green removed the single storey canted bays on the main façade, added three dormer windows and a projecting flat roofed portico, and altered the appearance from mid-century Victorian style to Georgian. The south east facade dormers were added at this time; the north west rear dormers are original.