18 York Avenue, Whitehead, Co. Antrim, BT38 9QT

18 York Avenue is a detached Edwardian seaside villa built around 1900, set on an elevated site overlooking the sea. The house has a complicated plan with an L-shaped footprint, multiple projections, and varied roof arrangements that make it a particularly impressive example of early 20th-century residential architecture.

The building is constructed of rendered pebbledash walling on a moulded plinth course. It is two storeys tall and multi-bay in arrangement, with a square-plan tower positioned prominently at the centre of the east-facing front elevation, containing the main entrance. The pitched roofs are covered in natural slate with terracotta ridgecomb tiles, ball finials to the gables, and decorative timber bargeboards. The tower has a pyramidal roof topped with a cast-iron weather-vane and features deep moulded timber eaves. Several rendered chimneystacks with corbelled caps and terracotta chimney pots rise from the roofline. Deep moulded eaves with ogee-moulded cast-iron guttering and downpipes run throughout, returning to the gables.

The front elevation faces east and is three bays wide with a single-bay gable to the south. A distinctive cast-iron veranda, cast at David King & Sons, Keppoch Iron Works, Possilpare, Glasgow, is positioned to the right of the entrance porch. The veranda comprises four decorative columns with foliate capitals and decorative bracket panels supporting a timber deck with a decorative cast-iron balustrade. The entrance itself is housed within a small porch accessed from the veranda via a square-headed door opening. The porch has an encaustic tiled floor, and a new timber glazed door now opens into it. The original timber doorcase comprises a timber panelled door flanked by sidelights, both with decorative etched glazing, and a dentilled cornice lintel with a tripartite overlight.

The south side elevation is two bays wide. It features a flat-roof bay to the right and a modern conservatory to the left. The north side elevation is a single-bay gabled elevation with a three-sided canted bay to the ground floor and a lower three-bay two-storey return.

Window openings throughout have segmental heads with moulded architrave surrounds on continuous moulded sill courses to both floors. Many openings feature a keystone with a sheaf of wheat in relief. Most windows are segmental-headed four-over-one timber sash windows with ogee horns. The window to the east gable at first-floor level is a Wyatt-style tripartite window. Single-pane timber sash windows are fitted to the return. At the base of the square-plan tower is an arched window opening with a fixed-pane window.

The ground floor incorporates canted bays to both the south and north elevations, each with a flat roof and hipped natural slate respectively, both having deep moulded cornices to ogee-moulded guttering.

The interior is described as intact. The original features within the porch include the timber panelled door, sidelights, and overlight with etched glazing, all retaining decorative character.

The site is well landscaped and accessed by a long gravel avenue to the north lined with mature trees. The avenue opens onto York Avenue through a pair of rubble basalt and yellow brick piers flanked by rubble basalt walls. The rear of the property is enclosed by a tall rubble stone wall positioned close to the rear elevation.

Historical records indicate the building first appears on the third-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1902. Valuation Revisions for Whitehead record the property as a house, yard, and small garden. It was occupied by Robert McKeown (later revised to Jane McKeown in 1928) and was leased from Robert Symington, valued at £38.