52 Main Street, Ballycarry, Larne, Co Antrim, BT38 9HH

52 Main Street, Ballycarry

This is an early 20th-century house of conventional design for its period, lacking overall special architectural or historic interest despite some minor idiosyncrasies in its detailing.

The building is a 1½ storey gabled house with roughcast walls and clinker brick dressings. The plinth is black painted and projecting. The main entrance faces west.

The west elevation contains two rectangular windows with timber sliding sashes hung vertically. The upper sashes are multi-paned (39 over 1) with long horns, over single pane lower sashes. Each window has a projecting cill of stone or concrete, painted. To the right of the entrance is a rectangular recessed porch with chunky open timber lattice-work spandrel and a modern quarry tile floor. A window in the rear of the recess matches the main front windows. The entrance door is panelled with Arts and Crafts style decorative wrought iron hinges and is topped by a rectangular 12-pane fanlight. The dormer in the attic has a swept roof with two wide rectangular windows on its front face either side of a broad central mullion. These are timber sashed windows (8 over 1) with details matching the main front windows. The dormer cheeks are built of brickwork. Two brickwork chimneys stand in line with the dormer. The gutters and downpipes are PVC.

The north elevation is three storeys, comprising a white painted roughcast upper storey over a black painted basement. The basement has three timber sliding sash windows (1 over 1 with horns). The main ground floor has two similar sash windows. Two attic windows are present: one is an original timber sliding sash and the other is a PVC replacement fixed light with top-hung vent. The rear elevation is also three storeys, with ground floor on basement. The central portion of the main storey is two windows wide and rises to form a central dormer. All windows here are sashed (1 over 1) except for a PVC replacement to the right hand side. A low single storey garage wing projects from the rear elevation at the right hand side. The south elevation comprises a south gable of similar character to the north, with two basement windows, none to the ground floor, and two original sashed windows to the attic.

The house stands facing the main street, set back within its own garden. The front boundary is a low smooth rendered wall with a central pedestrian gateway of square piers containing a timber gate of diagonal and cross pattern. At the right extremity is a vehicular gateway comprising square rubble piers faced with small stones and painted white, with flat concrete caps, containing a timber gate of diagonal and cross pattern.

The house was designed and built by William Calwell of Ballycarry for a Mr Sturdy. The precise date is not known, but it was built circa 1920s or 1930s. It does not appear on the Ordnance Survey map of 1921 but appears for the first time on the 1965 revision. Calwell (1863–1953) lived next door at number 54 in a bungalow built for himself around 1908. That property was built on what had been Calwell's tennis court.