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

54 Main Street, Ballycarry — A Californian-Style Bungalow, circa 1908

This is a house of considerable architectural and local historical interest, built around 1908. It was designed and constructed by William Calwell for his own occupation, in the distinctive idiom of a Californian bungalow — an unusual and at the time entirely novel building type for this part of County Antrim. It retains a significant number of its original features both internally and externally.

The house is one and a half storeys, with shingle-clad walls and a hipped roof covered in asbestos slates. The shingles used on the walls were brought from New Orleans by a Captain Orr. The original roof was also shingled, but Calwell himself replaced it at an early date with asbestos slates, having become concerned about fire risk. More recently, the lower courses of Calwell's original slates were replaced by the present owner, and these newer lower sections are laid in regular horizontal courses, while the well-weathered upper sections are laid in a diagonal pattern.

The main entrance faces west. The west elevation is symmetrical and single storey in height, its centrepiece a segmental arched entrance bay or verandah, recessed between two canted bays. The walls are clad in wooden shingles above a white-painted concrete basement. Windows are rectangular timber sliding sashes, vertically hung, one-over-one panes, with horns, and with lattice-pattern glazing bars to the upper sash; they sit in moulded surrounds with splayed wooden sills. The verandah floor is finished in granolithic or concrete with surface incisions scored to represent separate slabs. There is a moulded concrete front doorstep. The rectangular doorway has a timber panelled door with a plain brass knob and letterbox with a wooden sub-sill, and a moulded white-painted surround. Black-painted iron lamps on brackets flank each side of the doorway, with one window to each side of the door. To each side of the verandah is a white-painted timber slatted garden seat, suspended on flat iron hangers fixed to the inside of the archway and to the porch wall above the windows; these are later additions, the spaces having originally been occupied only by folding deckchairs. The verandah ceiling is tongued-and-grooved sheeted.

Above the verandah is a dormer with a swept roof. The front of the dormer contains two coupled rectangular timber casement windows with lattice-pattern glazing, and the dormer cheeks and front face are shingled. The main roof overhangs on shaped timber brackets, with tongued-and-grooved soffits, and has red-painted flashings over the angle ridges. PVC guttering is fitted throughout. There are two chimneys of red brick, each with a plain projecting concrete cornice and red pots. The dormer also has a PVC gutter and PVC downpipe.

The north elevation shows the main storey clad in shingles above a white-painted concrete basement, with a hipped and slated roof matching the front. A rear return extends to the left with a swept roof. There is a small original rooflight in the main roof. The canted bay on this elevation has a rectangular one-over-one sashed window with horns in each angled face, and a similar sashed window to each side of the bay, with a two-light lattice-glazed fixed light to the right of those. The basement windows on this elevation are, from left to right: a rectangular timber fixed light with a top-hung vent; a rectangular timber fixed light, single pane; and two small rectangular timber casements with lattice glazing.

The rear elevation is two storeys with a dormered attic, asymmetrical, and comprises the main rectangular block of the house with a central projecting bay and a projecting rear return to the right-hand side. The main block has a hipped and slated roof with sprocketed eaves and a swept dormer with shingled cheeks. The dormer front has four rectangular timber sliding sashes, one-over-one with horns. A red brick chimney projects forward from the dormer between the first and second windows, with a concrete cap and a modern pot. PVC rainwater goods serve both the dormer and main roof. The main block has shingled walls over a white-painted concrete basement. To the left of the main block, the basement has a rectangular three-over-three sashed window with horns, and above it in the main storey is a large rectangular timber fixed light with moulded surrounds and a wooden sill.

The central rear projection is built of white-painted concrete and takes the form of a rectangular oriel carried on a side wing wall. The main face of the oriel has one large rectangular timber sliding sash, vertically hung, five-over-one panes with long horns. One small rectangular timber fixed light with lattice glazing sits in the oriel's side wall. Below the oriel is a recess running back to the rear wall of the main block, with white-painted reveals, and rectangular timber fixed lights of single pane to the basement below.

The rear return is a later addition, built out over the original concrete steps that gave access to the original back door. Its upper part is clad in shingles and the lower in white-painted concrete. Small windows flanking the basement door have lattice glazing, and the basement door itself is an original six-panel door. The back door, now reached by a new flight of wooden steps, is a modern glazed and panelled door. The main storey of the return has a large rectangular timber fixed light, with PVC rainwater goods throughout. Extending eastward from the north-east corner of the rear elevation is a range of outbuildings in white-painted render and rubble stonework, noted as being of no architectural interest or merit.

The south elevation is single storey with a half basement, again with a hipped asbestos slate roof laid diagonally on the upper courses and in horizontal courses at the bottom. There is a PVC gutter on a white-painted timber fascia, with soffit and shaped roof beams matching those elsewhere. The main wall is shingle-clad above a white-painted concrete basement. The right-hand half of this elevation is a canted bay, which contains a broad rectangular timber picture window of a single pane with moulded wooden surrounds in the centre, and a rectangular one-over-one sashed window with horns on each angled face of the canted bay. To the left of the bay is a small rectangular timber fixed light with lattice glazing, and to the far left is a further rectangular one-over-one sashed window. The basement has two windows: a small rectangular lattice-glazed timber window with a large timber surround and concrete sill, and in the front face of the canted bay at basement level, a large rectangular timber sliding sash, three-over-three, with horns.

The house stands within the built-up area of the village, facing the main street but set back within its own well-kept garden. There are lawns to the front, rear, and south side. The front boundary is formed partly by short piers of white-painted rubble stonework with chain-link fencing, including a small original pedestrian gate of white-painted lattice timber-work, and partly by a rubble stone rockery wall at the south-west corner. The south boundary is formed by a modern diagonally-slatted wooden fence along the line of a new driveway cut through the original garden to provide access to a modern private housing development to the rear. The north boundary to the front of the house is formed by a hedge with a small original pedestrian gate similar to the front gate. To the rear of the house, beyond the outbuildings, is a pair of original-looking wooden gates of lattice form that serve as a vehicular entrance.

William Calwell (1863–1953) was a native of Ballycarry who emigrated in 1881 to San Mateo, near San Francisco, California, where he was apprenticed to his uncle Robert Wisnom as a carpenter and builder. He eventually established his own practice designing and building houses in the San Mateo area. In 1907 he returned to Ballycarry, where he was involved in setting up a milk co-operative known as the 'BB Farm'. He also designed and built a number of other houses in the Ballycarry area, including numbers 52 and 69 Main Street and 60 Island Road. The house at 54 Main Street was originally known as 'The Bungalow', and was recorded under that name on the Ordnance Survey map of 1921. With the proliferation of bungalows in the area in more recent years, the present owner has dropped that name. The house is recorded as having attracted local attention as the first bungalow to be built in the area. Calwell lived here until his death in 1953, after which the house was taken over by his daughter and son-in-law, the latter being the present owner at the time of listing.