Prospect House, 17 Prospect Road, Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, BT38 8QB

Prospect House

A detached late Georgian house built around 1820, located on Prospect Road in Carrickfergus. The building is set within a modern housing development completed around 2008, which has replaced the former mature garden setting and now encloses the house closely on all sides, with only a small external space remaining to the rear, bordered by Leicester Park to the north.

The house is a three-bay structure of two storeys over a basement, rectangular on plan with a central entrance. The principal elevation faces south and features two-storey canted bays to either side. The walls are constructed of exposed coursed rubble stone. The pitched roof is slate, though the majority of the original natural slating has been replaced with corrugated metal sheets, and only a few terracotta clay ridge tiles remain. Leaded hips cover the canted bays. Corbelled chimney-stacks with clay pots rise from each gable. The rainwater goods are cast-iron with an ogee profile, though few cast-iron downpipes survive.

The windows are finished with angled sandstone heads featuring a keyblock and painted masonry cills. The original windows were timber sliding sashes with six panes over six panes and exposed boxes, but these have been removed or destroyed, and the majority of openings are now boarded. The principal elevation has a central entrance with a round-headed fanlight, both now boarded, flanked by canted bays with windows on each cheek at ground and first floor levels. At first floor, the central bay features a Serliano window with a cast-iron balcony, though this balcony is now almost entirely missing except for a small section on the right. The left gable contains two oculus windows at first floor level. The rear elevation is five windows wide with a central entrance (boarded) and a window above it at first floor, with two windows to each side at both floors. The left gable repeats the two oculus windows at first floor. The basement level is not visible externally.

The house appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832, captioned "Prospect". The Townland Valuation records it as a house with basement storey and offices, owned and occupied by John Borthwick, initially valued at £14 1s 3d and later revised to £24 19s 1d, with total value including land of £59 8s 2d, later revised to £69 15s 5d. Griffith's Valuation of 1859 records no change in ownership, with house, offices and land valued at £40. A subsequent revision, date not recorded, added a gate lodge, raising the building value to £46. Valuation revisions from the 1860s show a further increase to £50, and in 1880 the occupancy changed from John Borthwick to John Girdwood.

Historical sources present conflicting dates for the house's construction. Earlier secondary sources dated it to the 1760s, but architectural historian C.E.B. Brett cited the 1808 Williamson revision of the Lendrick map of 1780, noting that the house's insertion in the later edition suggests construction around the turn of the century. Boyle, in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs, dated the house to around 1800, describing it as "a two-storey house with 2 sexagons in front…erected about the year 1800 by Henry Clements Ellis Esq."

Despite the loss of original features and its current condition, Prospect House remains an important late Georgian building in Carrickfergus, retaining handsome proportions and evidence of quality craftsmanship in its stone construction. The house was used as a restaurant in the 1990s and has been vacant for a number of years.