Inver Lodge, Whitla’s Brae, Larne, Co Antrim, BT40 3BY

Inver Lodge is an early 19th-century house of architectural quality, located in a suburban setting elevated above Larne with views towards the lough. The building appears to be a rebuilding or remodelling of an earlier house, first recorded on the Ordnance Survey map of 1857, though an earlier structure existed on the site in 1832.

The house is a two-storey gabled building with rendered, blocked and painted walls. The main entrance faces west and features a symmetrical three-bay elevation comprising a projecting gabled two-storey entrance bay flanked by single-storey hipped roof canted bays. The entrance itself is recessed within a panelled and pilastered surround with a plaster cornice and brackets. The original front door is a double leaf with panels and glazing featuring Gothic pattern glazing bars and a fanlight. Above the door, a rectangular window in the porch gable is a timber vertically hung sliding sash without horns, one over one with margin lights, set in a pilastered subframe. Ground floor windows in the porch side walls are similar, with blind recesses above. The porch is finished with a shaped barge board and turned wooden finial. Full height panelled pilasters ornament each extremity of the main facade.

The roof is finished with Bangor blue slates in regular courses, with overhanging eaves and a flat soffit. Four chimneys—one to each gable and two central—are rendered and painted, topped with a mixture of original cream earthenware pots with crowns and later plain red terracotta examples. A small flush rooflight, possibly original, is present. The guttering and downpipes are cast iron. The canted bays are hipped roofed with lead-covered ridges and feature unusual detailing where flanking piers intersect the coved frieze. Each bay has a four-light window with angled timber sashes without horns, two over two with margins, set between panelled mullions of pilaster type. A scalloped wooden hood, now minus sunblinds, surmounts the centre lights.

A single-storey hipped open porch projects from the north gable, a later inter-war addition. It has walls and roof matching the main house, with semi-circular arched openings and a projecting platband at springing level, providing open archways to front and rear and a semi-circular headed window in an arched recess to the end wall; the window is metal with small panes. This porch encloses a side door to the house, a timber panelled and glazed inter-war insertion. The north gable above features a small paned metal casement window, not original and probably inter-war, and a lean-to hipped return to the side porch, also inter-war, containing one small metal casement and a recent large PVC fixed light in a small paned style. Below this, in a basement created by the steep site slope, are two ledged doors.

The east facade rises two storeys plus basement and is heavily glazed with a mixture of original sashes, inter-war casements, and recent PVC replacements. The south gable contains inter-war metal casements, and a terrace below it is formed by the flat roof of outbuildings at basement level. The setting comprises a mature, leafy garden, though the hard landscaping immediately surrounding the house—comprising tarmac terraces, concrete paved steps with modern iron railings—is not in keeping with the building's early 19th-century character. The outbuildings are of no architectural quality or interest. The boundary walling is of poor quality, and the main entrance gateway on Mill Road is modern; the original gateway on Whitla's Brae was sold off with part of the garden for new housing development.

The entrance elevation retains its original features intact, making this a significant example of early 19th-century domestic architecture, despite later alterations to other facades and the quality of its setting.