St Leonard's, Rostrevor Road, Warrenpoint, Newry, Co Down, BT34 3RT

St Leonard's is the left-hand villa of a pair of mirror-image mid to late 19th-century semi-detached villas, erected around 1860 and sited on the north side of Rostrevor Road in Warrenpoint. The building originally faced seaward across mature grounds, though its setting has been significantly compromised by dense modern residential development to the rear and a modern lodge-style house constructed at the road frontage. The front lawn has been largely converted to car parking, and the building itself has been subdivided into flats with multiple external electricity meter boxes.

Each villa is two storeys high and two bays wide. The principal facades face south, whilst the entrances are positioned on the side elevations. The pitched L-plan roof is covered in natural slate with moulded advanced eaves and bracketed ogee cast-iron gutters; the gutters to the right bay of the south facade carry cast-iron crestings. The front pitch has been altered with modern roof vents and a modern skylight to its right bay and is gabled to the left bay with plain timber bargeboard and a diminutive timber finial. Chimneys are rendered stucco with chamfered bases, moulded caps and yellow octagonal terracotta pots. A four-pot chimney rises between the two houses, and a two-pot chimney between the two bays.

The external walls are smooth rendered and painted, with a moulded basecourse and moulded platband between floors, supplemented by two thinner, plainer platbands at quarter and three-quarter height on each window. All windows feature run-moulded stucco architraves with plain decorative key-blocks. Ground-floor windows are 1/1 sashes unless otherwise stated; first-floor windows are 2/2 sashes with segmental heads.

The south elevation comprises two bays. The left bay projects slightly and contains a single-storey canted bay window with moulded and fretted parapet over a blocking course concealing its flat roof, with windows to the front and narrower openings to each cheek. A single window lights the first floor, with a stucco roundel in the gable above, its key-blocks positioned at the cardinal points. The right bay has a rectangular single-storey bay with two front windows and narrow blank cheeks, topped by a swept leaded roof with decorative gutter crestings and a single first-floor window above.

The west elevation is three bays wide and contains the main entrance. A single-storey gabled porch with pitched natural slate roof and decorative fretted timber bargeboard on paired timber brackets projects from the central bay. The porch entrance features a door with two round-headed panels separated by a beaded muntin, and a cat-flap to the left side, surmounted by a plain semicircular-headed fanlight with moulded architrave and fluted arris. The right cheek of the porch holds a 2/2 sash window; the left cheek is blank. The remaining bays on this elevation each contain an identical window above the porch and a single opening to each floor below, all containing 2/2 sashes except the ground-floor right, which has been replaced with a partly-glazed modern timber door flanked by a plain sidelight and transom.

A lower two-storey return is set back slightly from the west elevation, abutting the north gable of the main house. It features a pitched natural slate roof aligned north-south with walls and eaves matching the main block, but lacks the stringcourse between floors and retains only a single platband to each floor. Two modern doors at ground-floor right have thin rendered architraves, and two wide 6/6 uPVC casement windows occupy the remaining ground-floor openings. The first floor contains three 6/6 sash windows to the left and a fixed 3x4 timber window inset into a sash box to the right. Multiple electricity meter boxes abut this elevation. A modern two-storey apartment block, aligned west-east on the site of the former stable block, abuts the north gable of the return with minimal architectural distinction.

The building does not appear on the 1859 Ordnance Survey 6-inch map but is first cited in the Second Valuation book of 1861 as unoccupied, indicating an erection date of around 1860. The landowner at that time was Leonard Watson; the connection between his name and the villa's own is uncertain. The orchard formerly occupying the rear has been cleared for dense modern housing accessed via the main house's front driveway.