Inisreen, 42 Brown’s Bay Road, Islandmagee, Larne, Co Antrim, BT40 3RX

Inisreen is a good example of domestic work from the Edwardian era, designed by the important specialist architect Thomas J. Houston. It displays an interesting array of architectural details and retains original interior features.

The house is a two-storey building of asymmetrical plan, built in 1905 for Mr E.C. Smith. It is constructed of precast concrete blocks in imitation of stonework, with rock-faced quoins to the extremities and rock-faced basal courses. The main entrance faces west. The entrance front is three bays wide, two storeys high with an attic. The hipped roof is covered in Westmoreland green slates in regular courses with red terracotta ridge tiles. Chimneys, of concrete blocks with moulded cornice and arranged on a cross-plan, rise beyond the ridge, fitted with red pots which are original.

The central bay projects slightly and contains a porch flanked by two narrow fixed lights with wavy heads and decorative leaded glass at ground floor level. Above the porch are two first-floor windows with rectangular drip moulding, featuring timber sliding sashes, vertically hung with one-over-one glazing and horns. A small sashed window sits in the apex of the gable, similarly detailed. Corbelled kneelers support the attic gable. The entrance is set in a central projecting porch with a gable on corbelled kneelers, roofed as the main house. A plain boarded oak door sits in a wavy-headed opening with decorative coved drip moulding and surround. Buttresses flank the porch doorway on each side. Four semi-circular granite steps lead to the front door. Each side wall of the porch contains a narrow fixed light with wavy head and decorative leaded glass. To the left is a rectangular projecting bay with one window to each floor. To the right is a curved bay with three windows to each floor. All windows are sashed as previously described. Cast iron guttering of moulded profile, original, runs around the building.

The north elevation features a two-storey curved bay with three windows to each floor, sashed as before, with a flat-roofed dormer above containing two-light fixed light and side-hung casement windows. To the left of the end wall is a return of the same ridge height as the front block but with eaves swept down to a lower level. New PVC downpipes supplement the original cast iron.

The rear elevation, facing east, is almost entirely original work of 1906. To the right is a timber ledged door flanked by two sashed windows as previously described. A small single-storey lean-to back porch, a slightly later addition to the original house, follows. It is of similar artificial stone but shows joints open in places and cracking to the head over the window and door. The porch door is timber ledged with a small rectangular fanlight. One window above the back porch is sashed as originally detailed. The two-storey end wall of the main rear return features two windows to the ground floor and a dormer in the attic as described.

The south elevation is of similar character to the entrance front, with two sets of paired windows to each floor of the return and a single window to each floor of the end gable of the front block. Two attic dormers, as previously described, occupy the front block and return. At the easternmost extremity of the return stands a large square-section cast iron downpipe with foliated mounts and a wavy section to the hopper head, an original Arts and Crafts style feature. Two new narrow-gauge PVC downpipes, not too obtrusive, have been added. Pre-cast concrete cills match the artificial stonework throughout.

To the east of the house is a long outbuilding, originally a stableblock, connected to the house on the south side by a coach archway on piers dated 1906 in lead numbers, and on the north side by a yard wall containing a smaller pedestrian doorway with a now-missing sliding door. The coach archway is rebated but the sliding door is not functioning. The outbuilding, yard wall and archways are of similar material to the house. The yard-facing wall of the outbuilding contains one sashed window as previously described, plus two ledged timber single doors, ledged double doors, and large sliding doors of the Coburn System, all original. A wall ladder at the south end inside leads to the loft above, lit by a single sash window in the apex of the gable.

The entrance gates are of white-painted wrought iron with a rectilinear pattern and scrolling finials, set between square piers of artificial stonework with domical caps. Curved screen walls terminate in outer piers. A small pedestrian gate of similar style to the main gates stands in the south boundary.

The house stands in a spacious, well-kept garden in a very rural location on an elevated site well planted with trees, overlooking the main road and easily visible from it, with distant views to the sea. The boundary wall to the south and west is plain, rendered and blocked, with concrete copings. At the side garden are two concrete block square piers with domical caps but with no evidence of a gate having existed.