Ash Villa

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 2½ storey house with part basement, upper floor half timbered, gabled plain clay tile roof covering with smooth rendered and painted walls. The E elevation, which is at right angles to the Governor Road, is the entrance front. It has a projecting gable with the entrance door on the N side of it. On the ground floor a rectangular bay with 3 windows of 3 panes each on front and narrower window, similarly divided, on the flank walls. A skirt tiled roof covers the bay and extends and returns to form a canopy over the entrance door and is supported by braced timber brackets. The entrance door is panelled without fanlight. The porch is lit by a vertical window in the gable. A pair of windows light the room flanking the entrance.

The first floor is half timbered with heavy posts rising from formidable bressumers with jetty spurs under. Another bressumer defines the attic floor level and the raking barges. Pairs of windows are formed between the posts similar to ground floor windows. The gable is likewise done in half timber work with straight braces and curved braces forming patterns under windows. There is a pair of windows in the gable each divided into 3 panes.

Barges are deep and bold with fillet mouldings. This treatment is expressed on the other gables of the house and are a dominant feature of the design.

The N elevation which fronts onto Governor Road extends beyond the width of the gable and the roof sweeps down at a slightly lesser pitch to roof it. A balcony extends from the rear but in line with the N side with balustrading, probably stone but not painted. Access to the balcony is from the first floor landing. The balcony forms a flat roof over the kitchen and scullery and rear porch.

A small canted bay with 3 windows is set on the ground floor of the N elevation and has a skirt tile roof over supported on pairs of timber brackets on each side.

Walls are smooth rendered and painted and on the upper walls plaster in fills also painted.

There are 2 large chimney stacks, one rises out of the N gable while the other opposite, rises from the eaves with short pitched roof behind. The stacks are in bricks with boldly moulded double shouldering in what appears to be sandstone but could be mass concrete.

Roofs are rosemary tiles with crested ridge.

The house is sited in a small plot at the junction of Governor and Duncreggan Roads with small garden areas to 3 sides. A screen wall extends from the kitchen across the site form N to S.

Historical information

The house appears to be built around the 1904 to 1905 period and it resembles the work of Albert Forman but R.E. Buchanan is more likely the architect as Forman was no longer in the city at this time. In the post war period a factory owner called Curran was in residence. The present owner purchased the property in the late 1980’s.

References

Primary Sources
1. Derry Almanac and Directory, 1924+1927 p.140.
2. O.S. Map 1924 Rev. Londonderry 24.

Secondary Sources
1. Present owner

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

An example of the Art and Crafts style of architecture which was prevalent between 1880s and 1910. There are several detached houses like it in the city suburbs and further afield