San Jose, 91 Dublin Road, Newry, Co Down, BT35 8QP

San Jose, 91 Dublin Road, Newry, Co Down

This building has been demolished since the survey. It was a modernist house built in 1966 to designs by M.H. Ferguson of Banbridge, with gardens designed by Robert Carson in 1968. The house was demolished between 1997 and 2003.

The building was a three-level split-level house of high specification, positioned on the west side of Dublin Road on an east-facing slope. It comprised three interconnected units arranged around a central link block.

The central link block was single-storey, incorporating the front door, hall and cloakroom. It had a flat roof with vertical timber sheeted eaves and concrete brick walls. The front door was timber with glazed top and bottom panels, flanked to its left by a two-paned sidelight with an internal wrought metal security grill.

To the left of this block lay the living block, a single-storey structure raised on a concrete brick base and set behind a porte-cochere. It contained the living and dining room with a sunroom beyond and kitchen to the rear. The living and dining room had a large timber window to its left elevation and three narrow rectangular full-height windows where it adjoined the link block. The sunroom was double glazed in plastic and had originally been an open porch. The rear kitchen had fixed pane and louvred timber windows. A two-storey block projected towards the road at right angles to this section, with open ends to allow traffic through and an enclosed side of random rubble walling with openings for access to the front garden and plant containers. At first floor, this block had concrete brick walls and a random rubble chimney to the cheek with concrete coping and copper hood. The first floor served as a sitting room with extensive glazing.

To the right, the ground fell away to create a two-storey utility and bedroom block. The ground floor wall was of random rubble with a concrete beam between it and the concrete brick ground floor. Three narrow ceiling-height windows ran between the concrete beam and rubble wall. At the extreme right end on the ground floor was a broad vertical sheeted panel which continued around the corner—this was originally the garage entrance. The first floor bedrooms had two horizontal rectangular windows, with one fixed panel to the right and one louvered panel to the left. The end elevation of this block was of plain concrete brick.

All roofs were flat with white painted concrete copings. The rear elevation was throughout of concrete brick, with doors to the kitchen and store. Steps led down to the link and utility blocks; the utility block had a boiler room annex with brick chimney attached to the main wall.

The house sat into the east-facing slope with a drive leading up from the main road. The garden featured a front lawn to the road with two terraced battered random rubble walls and a loop driveway through the porte-cochere. To the left of the house was a landscaped terrace with a raised viewpoint, large seating area and fountain, with plant beds having random rubble retaining walls.

Apart from kitchen fittings and the enclosing of the garage and rear terrace to form a conservatory, the building remained unaltered from its original construction.