St Joseph's Home, Seaview, Warrenpoint, Newry, Co Down, BT34 3NQ

St Joseph's Home is a substantial late 19th-century hotel complex — one of the most prominent buildings on Seaview in Warrenpoint — that survives largely intact, both inside and out. It stands on the corner of Prince's Street and Seaview and is currently used as a residential home, formerly operated as a hotel. The grounds are enclosed by railings on a dwarf wall and contain a small garden shelter. To the rear, in now-separate grounds on Prince's Street, is the former hotel pavilion.

THE BUILDING AS A WHOLE

The complex divides into two distinct blocks. To the left is the larger, rising three and a half storeys with an octagonal tower at its left corner. To the right is a lower three-storey block, designed to resemble a pair of typical seafront villas. A series of rear returns and extensions extend behind both blocks, and the whole is set within a front garden that curves with Seaview.

THE LEFT BLOCK

This block is three and a half storeys high and three bays wide. It has a steeply pitched natural slate roof with overhanging eaves carried on slender timber eaves brackets, and moulded metal rainwater goods. A wide rendered chimney rises between the central and right bays. The front elevation faces south-east. Walls are rendered and painted, with band rustication using V-channelling, a moulded cill course between each floor, and a moulded hood course over the windows.

A prominent attic gable projects to the front right. It is smooth rendered and painted, with a coped gable and a roundel set into its apex, and a tall rendered chimneystack rising from the eaves of its right (east) pitch. At ground and first floor, the right bay has a chamfered right corner. At second floor the right bay is set back, as is the dormer above it. The flat roof over the first-floor right bay is concealed behind a moulded parapet.

The left bay takes the form of an octagonal tower that clasps the left corner of the building. Five of its eight faces are exposed (the other three are where it meets the main block), each face containing a window. The tower has a steeply pitched octagonal roof, natural-slated with iron cresting and eaves detailing that matches the main block. Below the eaves, each face has a recessed decorative panel. The walls and detailing match the rest of the façade.

The main entrance is set within a broad, single-storey porch at ground-floor right. The porch has chamfered front corners, a chamfered base course, and walls that are band-rusticated at lower level and smooth above a hood mould course, which runs up to spring-of-arch level of the large semicircular-headed doorway at the front. The doorway's spandrels and chamfered corners are each inset with a small roundel with a hood mould and foliated stops. The flat roof of the porch is concealed behind a quatrefoil fretted masonry parapet. A religious statue of Mary rests on the parapet coping. The doorway has a pole-moulded and chamfered reveal, and its archivolt is painted with the words 'STAR OF THE SEA PRAY FOR US'.

All windows throughout this block are one-over-one segmental-headed sliding sashes with unpainted granite cills. There is one window to each exposed face of the tower; those at first floor open onto an iron veranda with a fine wrought-iron balustrade. There is a single window to each floor of the central bay. Three windows are grouped together at first-floor right, over the entrance — these are narrower than all the others. There is a pair of windows at second-floor right and another pair in the attic gable at right, these having a shelf cill on three decorative brackets.

The left (south-west) elevation of this block is two bays wide. The roof here is pitched and natural-slated, with two small dormers — one to the centre and one to the right — each with a hipped natural slate roof and a pair of timber casement windows, with slated cheeks. On the left pitch rises a tall rendered chimneystack, set parallel with this elevation and with V-channels running down its length to delineate four flues. It has a moulded coping, and to its rear is a supporting slated gable. The right bay is abutted on its right side by the clasping tower. All cheek faces have windows, except the left ones at first and second floors, which contain doors giving onto metal escape stairs from a balcony.

The rear (north-east) elevation is abutted by a number of returns and additions. These have pitched roofs, rendered and painted walls and mostly sliding sash windows. There is a small internal yard, a glazed link to the rear extensions, and a modern garage. Abutting the right side is a single-storey block, with its right cheek in line with the south-west elevation of the main block. It has a pitched roof running parallel with the rear elevation, canted and hipped at the south-west end. Its canted south-west end has a large segmental-headed window opening on each cheek, each containing a two-paned casement window with transoms above.

THE RIGHT BLOCK

This block is symmetrical and reads as a pair of typical seafront villas, minus front doors. Its front elevation is a continuation of the left block and also faces south-east. It is four bays wide, with the two central bays narrower than the outer two. The pitched natural slate roof has a rendered chimney with moulded copings to either side of the central bays, and overhanging eaves carry half-round metal rainwater goods. Walls are band-rusticated with a moulded stringcourse between each floor. Windows are two-over-two sashes with stop-end-chamfered reveals and heads, and unpainted granite cills. Those at second floor are slightly reduced in height. The left and right bays each have a three-storey canted bay window, with a window to each cheek and a canted natural slate roof that ties into the main roof. The central bays share three windows at ground floor. At first and second floor there is a single window to each central bay, with the left central bay having an additional window to the left and the right central bay having an additional window to the right.

THE REAR RETURNS

The right gable of the right block fronts onto Prince's Street and continues as a narrow bay beneath a return roof at the rear. The gable features a highly decorative timber bargeboard, the heavy frame of which is supported on three large wall-mounted granite corbels. The frame is chamfered, has Gothic lancet panels, and curving braces. The walls match the façade treatment. Each floor of the end gable has three windows, as on the front elevation.

The rear return is in three stages. The first stage is narrow with a pitched artificial slate roof aligned north-south. It has a rendered chimney on its end gable and a plain bargeboard. Its left cheek, facing Prince's Street, ties into the right gable of the right block. It is similarly detailed to that gable and has a doorway at ground floor flanked by narrow one-over-one fixed leaded sidelights, with a pair of glazed timber doors and a leaded transom above. There are two narrow windows to each upper floor.

The second stage of the return is slightly lower, with a pitched natural slate roof aligned north-south and a rendered chimney on its north end. Its left cheek continues from the first stage in similar detail, though windows and stringcourses step down. There are three windows to each floor, with bars to the ground-floor windows. The heads of the first-floor windows are contained within gabled wall-head dormers with pitched artificial slate roofs.

The third stage of the return is taller than the second, with a pitched artificial slate roof aligned west-east. Its east gable has a decorative bargeboard, timber-framed and inset with Gothic roundels. There are rendered and painted chimneys to each end gable. Its left cheek is flush with that of the second stage, though windows and stringcourses step up. There are two windows to each floor, with bars to the ground-floor windows; those to the gable are paired. The end (north) elevation of the third stage is abutted at ground floor by a rear hall. The wall above has band-rusticated quoins to the left corner, wrapping around from the left cheek, and a single two-over-two central window to each upper floor. The second-floor window head is contained within a gabled wall-head dormer with a pitched artificial slate roof and timber bargeboard.

The hall abutting to the rear has a hipped natural slate roof aligned north-south, with a modern skylight on its left pitch facing Prince's Street, and a high parapet wall to that elevation with a plain coping. The left elevation is band-rusticated. The left end has a doorway with a four-panelled varnished timber door — the top two panels glazed — and a two-paned transom above, all with deep stop-end-chamfered reveals and head. The rest of this elevation has five large, equally spaced windows, each with two large fixed panes and a pair of narrow transoms above, on painted concrete cills.

THE EXTENSIONS

The rear extension is in two stages, joined to the main block by a glazed link, with its roof aligned north-east to south-west. The first stage, at the north-east end, is modern (late 1970s to early 1980s) and has a concrete roof, rendered walls and modern windows. The second stage, dating from the late 1990s, is built in a very sympathetic style. It has a pitched natural slate roof, rendered walls, a corner tower, and segmental-headed sash windows.

THE SETTING

The front garden is wide and extends to the south-west, curving with Seaview. It is enclosed by a rendered dwarf wall carrying railings with foliated finials and alternating hoop tops. Gate piers — a pair at either end of the front elevation — are octagonal with canted conical copings; the left piers are taller than the right. The gates to the left end are gone and replaced by railings. Decorative wrought-iron gates remain at the right end.

HISTORY

The lower three-storey block to the north is the earlier of the two parts, first recorded in the 1885 Valuation revision book. At that time it was known as the Beach Hotel and had been built by Henry Stanley at a cost of over £3,000, with a rateable value of £115. An 1891 publication describes it as "a magnificent three-storey structure covering an area of fully half an acre, with an additional half acre laid out as lawn-tennis courts", with a spacious entrance hall, a large dining room capable of accommodating a great number of guests, a luxuriously furnished drawing room, billiard room, smoke room, suites of private apartments, comfortable bedrooms, bathrooms supplied with both salt and fresh water, spacious kitchens and cellars, and all the usual facilities of a large and well-organised establishment.

Despite this, the hotel lay vacant between 1887 and 1889, suggesting the venture was not initially a success. It was taken over by a syndicate of Newry and Warrenpoint businessmen in 1889. The rateable value of £95 in 1890 increased sharply to £205 by 1896, which almost certainly reflects the construction of the turreted and gabled three-and-a-half-storey section at the south — the larger left block as it stands today. The hotel was renamed the Highlands Hotel in 1897. In 1899 the complex was purchased by the Great Northern Railway Company and renamed the Great Northern Hotel; the railway company was also responsible for the nearby pavilion now in the school grounds.

A postcard of around 1900 shows the building before the metal fire stair was added to the left elevation. At that time the front porch was painted 'GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL', the central ground-floor window of the right block appears to have functioned as a doorway, and the bay windows of the right block still had wrought-iron hip finials.

The Sisters of Mercy purchased the site in 1922. How the railings escaped the Second World War scrap iron drive is not known, though it is rumoured that the nuns buried the front gates to prevent their loss. The building was used as a location for the 1998 film The Butcher Boy.