7 WEST END PARK

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Late-Victorian mid-terrace two-bay three-storey brick, Arts and Crafts style townhouse. Built 1896. Rectangular on plan with a large projecting rear return. Principal elevation faces East onto West End Park, set behind low rendered painted boundary wall. Built part of a terrace row of twenty-two similar houses of this type lining the west side of West End Park.

Pitched natural slate roof continuous with No.6 West End Park with a modern roof lights and a large double red brick chimney stack with six clay pots shared with No.8. Timber fascia and soffit with exposed rafter tails; half round uPVC guttering discharging to a square uPVC downpipe.

East elevation is of red brick 'English Garden Wall Bond'; windows are square-headed with a two storey canted bay window rising from the ground to first floor level. The second floor has a slight cantilevered box pedimented window resting on the canted bay below, supported by large timber brackets to either side. Pediment has half-timber treatment with plain wide painted timber fascia board finish and a coupled 6/2 timber sliding sash window. Second floor level has half-timber treatment supported on small carved timber corbel brackets continuous with No.2. Square-headed opening to entrance doorway, four steps up and contains an original raised-and-fielded pair of half-leaf full-height painted timber doors. All windows are timber sliding sashes, 1/2 sliding sashes to canted bay on ground and first floors and the same type to first floor window over the main entrance door. 1/1 horizontally hung timber sliding sash on second floor level. Painted rendered band to ground and first floor window heads and painted rendered surround to canted bay windows, painted sill course to first windows.

North and south sides are adjoined to neighbouring properties No. 8 & 6 West End Park (HB01/20/002F).

West elevation to the rear is of three-storeys smooth-rendered painted with a two-storey rear return built at half-landing height, shared gable with No. 6 and a red brick outbuilding extending to rear boundary wall with a corrugated pitched roof and vertically-sheeted double doors opening onto rear passage way leading to Eastway Gardens. The fenestration pattern is irregular; all windows are multi-pane timber casements to rear elevation and rear return.

Pitched natural slate roof with black clay ridge tiles to the main roof and rear return. Large red brick shared chimney stack rising from the South side, centred on ridge with six buff clay pots. uPVC rainwater goods throughout.

Materials:
Roof Natural Slate
RWG uPVC
Walling Brick
Windows Timber Sliding Sash (E) and timber casements (W)

Setting:
Located on the west side of West End Park on an elevated site, set within a terrace row of twenty-two townhouses of similar type set back from the pavement behind low rendered painted boundary walls with small gardens, front entrance reached via a flight of steps.

Historical information

West End Park, a terrace of 22 three-storey red brick dwellings was laid out between 1896 and 1905. The terrace is located above the Lone Moor Road (which was in existence from at least the late-17th century) and was part of the development of housing in the area at the end of the 19th century that also saw the laying out of red brick terraces at Stanley’s Walk, Laburnum Terrace and Elmwood Terrace. The Annual Revisions note that the terrace was erected in phases with the Tudor-style nos 1-7 being the first to be completed whilst the remaining nos 8-22 were constructed in a simpler Victorian manner between 1896 and 1905. The terrace was home to many of the city’s professional and mercantile elite.

No. 7 West End Park was constructed in 1896 and was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1899. The valuer noted that nos 1-7 West End Park were owned by Joseph Ballantine, a local architect and builder who was active in the late-19th century and possessed business premises on the Strand Road. Although the architect of the terrace is not known with certainty it is likely that the row was designed by Ballantine who had also designed the similar Arts-and-Crafts red brick terrace at St. Columb’s Court which shares a Tudor character with West End Park (UTD; DIA). The terrace was first depicted on the c. 1873-1910 Annual Revisions map for the city on which was marked a proposed plan for the terrace along its current layout.

The Annual Revisions set the rateable value of No. 7 West End Park at £22 and recorded the first occupant as Thomas Lipsett, a traveling commercial trader. By 1911 the house was occupied by Joseph Lynch, a grocer and seed merchant. In that year the census building return described No. 7 West End Park as a 1st class dwelling that consisted of 12 rooms. Over the following three decades the occupants of the house changed with great frequency and under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936-57) the value of No. 7 West End Park was raised to £26. In 1942 the property was occupied by Thomas Houston who continued to reside there until at least the 1970s. By the end of the Second Revaluation (1956-72) the total rateable value of No. 7 West End Park stood at £32.

In 1970 the UAHS guide for Derry described nos 1-7 West End Park as ‘rather massive in appearance, having strong modelled gables over the projecting bays finished in half-timbered work’ (UAHS guide, p. 51). Only nos 1-7 West End Park were listed in 1979. Calley stated that nos 1-7 ‘have particularly wide and bold canted bays which are emphasised with wide smooth-rendered bands and surrounds … the attic storey is a massive conglomeration of half-timberwork giving the charming appearance of an Elizabethan village perched on an Edwardian terrace’ (Calley, p. 453). The NIEA HB Records note that No. 7 West End Park underwent a renovation in 1984 that included the reconstruction of its red brick chimney stack and the reslating of its roof (NIEA HB Records).

References

Primary Sources
1. PRONI VAL/12/E/157/1/13 – Annual Revisions Map (c. 1873-1910)
2. PRONI VAL/12/B/33/2B-2E – Annual Revisions (1898-1931)
3. PRONI VAL/3/C/6/12 – First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936-57)
4. PRONI VAL/4/B/5/17 – Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956-72)
5. Ulster Town Directories (1880-1943)
6. Census of Ireland (1901; 1911)
7. First Survey Record – HB01/20/002 (1970)
8. First Survey Image – HB01/20/002 (No Date)
9. NIEA HB Records – HB01/20/00G

Secondary Sources
1. Calley, D., ‘City of Derry: An historical gazetteer to the buildings of Londonderry’ Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 2013.
2. Ferguson, W. S; Rowan, A. J; Tracey, J. J., ‘List of historic buildings, groups of buildings, areas of architectural importance in and near the city of Derry’ Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1970.

Online Resources
1. Dictionary of Irish Architects - http://www.dia.ie/

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

T. Historic Importance
V. Authorship
X. Local Interest
S. Authenticity
R. Age

Evaluation

Mid-terrace two-bay three-storey Tudor-style redbrick with half-timberwork townhouse built in 1896 likely to designs by Joseph Ballantine, a local architect and builder who owned Nos 1-7. No.7 is one of the terraced row of twenty-two houses lining the west side of West End Park, a street aligned north-south and located on the west side of the River Foyle at the southern end of Lone Moor Road. No.7 is a fine example of its type, retaining much external historic detailing such as a half-leaf timber entrance door. It is the last of the group of seven similar townhouses which are distinctive in style in contrast to the less detailed Victorian style of No's 8-22 which were built up until 1905. No's 1-7 have group value and the local area is enhanced by their historic detailing, character and style.