The Grange

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A two-storey roughcast house of asymmetrical plan in Arts and Crafts style. Main entrance faces east in a projecting two-storey entrance bay.

East elevation is two-storey: comprises a two-storey hipped block with a gabled two-storey entrance bay projecting from it, with the side of an open verandah extending to the left-hand extremity and the gateway to a single storey coach yard extending to the right.
Roofs of red tiles with overhanging eaves on exposed rafter ends; chimneys are rendered as main house, rectangular clustered, with plain projecting cornices; original tall red pots.
Walls of roughcast render, wet dashed and painted white; black painted half-timbering to upper storey of entrance bay and upper floor of end bay to right: timberwork wooden pegged, with three shaped timber brackets supporting the timberwork over the main entrance. Battered profile to ground floor of wall to right of entrance bay, revealed where end bay stepped back.
Main entrance is an off-centre semi-elliptical archway, with recessed porch containing an original rectangular timber glazed and panelled door, painted white, with glazed and panelled sidelights and an arched fanlight with radial and looped glazing bars. Recessed porchway floored with red brickwork laid in herringbone pattern; red tiled skirting; bow front to brickwork step, with two red tinted bowed concrete steps up to it.
Windows to first floor are rectangular timber small-paned casements, and larger single pane casements; windows on ground floor are currently boarded up. Moulded timber drips over windows.
Cast iron gutters, painted black, with cast iron downpipes, painted white, with moulded curving hoppers.
To each side of the entrance bay are short angled returns, to the ground floor of the main block, up to cill level, with narrow windows above, topped by small red tiled roofs.
First floor windows immediately to left and right of the entrance bay break up through the eaves line, with dormer roofs swept over them.
To the right of the right-hand end bay the ground floor wall continues as a screen wall to the yard, containing a gateway of two square piers with overhanging caps, and ramped copings, all roughcast. To the right-hand extremity of the gateway is the end bay of the coach house, with battered buttresses to each side: hipped roof, tiled as main house, with deep overhang to eaves; one window small-paned, as previous.
To the left-hand extremity of the east elevation is the open verandah, with a plinth wall extending to the left, roughcast, with ramped coping; black painted timberwork supports a hipped tiled roof; cast iron gutter and downpipe.
South elevation comprises a two-storey semi-circular bay to the left of a recessed single storey verandah, with the main roof swept down over it; main roof surmounted by a broad tripartite chimney.
Bay to left is roughcast to ground floor, with half-timbering, as previous, to first floor, with a gabled half-timbered roof oversailing the curved bay, supported on angled timber struts. Windows are rectangular timber, canted around the bay, with continuous semi-circular timber cills and heads; moulded black painted timber boxes contain roller sun awnings over each ground floor window with box fronts fixed by angled iron bar struts.
Verandah to right is supported at the front on a pair of large solid wooden posts, black painted, on roughcast plinth walls, with curved brackets to the timber beam over; affixed to front of beam is a full width sun awning, essentially of similar form to previous.
Verandah floored as open entrance porch on east elevation, with tinted render to front edge of brickwork rather than an exposed brickwork step; this appears to be a later repair to original brickwork which crumbled. Ceiling of verandah has exposed black painted timber beams with panels between whitened.
To rear of verandah is a rectangular glazed and panelled door, or French window, with glazed and panelled sidelights.

West elevation is two-storey with an attic storey: roofs hipped and gabled, tiled as previous; two first floor windows break up through eaves-line to form wall-head dormers as previous to entrance front, with a full dormer in the main roof above; small-paned casements to full dormer with swept tiled roof over; looks like lead clad cheeks; cast iron guttering to full dormer and to main roof, with cast iron downpipes and soil pipes.
At left-hand extremity of main two-storey block of house is a rectangular timber glazed and panelled door flanked by a small rectangular window to each side.
Extending to the left is a lower coach house and outbuildings: red tiled roofs with overhanging eaves on deep projecting beams with boarded soffits; timber boxed eaves to corner of outbuildings, with roughcast soffit; low roughcast chimney in roof; original flush iron rooflight; cast iron rainwater goods.
Projecting to the west from the north end of the coachyard outbuildings is a later gabled additional block of less substantial quality than the main complex, with roughcast walls, red asbestos tiles to roof, and cast iron gutters; later wooden rooflight, in poor repair.

North elevation of outbuildings: roughcast walls with projecting buttress to left-hand extremity, and a rectangular ledged timber door to right-hand corner; pair of glazed rectangular ledged timber doors at high level, to loft; loft has original iron flush rooflight; later additional block extends to right-hand side.

North elevation of main block of house has the tiled roof sweeping down low over a tall ground floor; hipped dormer in the upper portion of the roof, has tiled roof and cheeks, 3-light small-paned timber casements to front; in lower portion of roof below is a modern flush rooflight (the only modernisation evident on the exterior of the building); ground storey roughcast as previous; cast iron gutter and downpipes; rectangular opening to right-hand side of wall, with roughcast reveals and black timber beam over, leading into a flat ceilinged recess. Recess surfaced in concrete; walls smooth rendered and painted white with black painted plinth; ceiling smooth plastered and painted white; five ledged timber doors giving access to a coal house to left; main body of house, straight ahead; generator room, followed by toilet, both to right; wood store, lying to the north of the main wall of the house.

Yard is surfaced in concrete; walls roughcast. Block to west side is single storey, roughcast, with red tiled roof; overhanging eaves on deep timber beams; wide rectangular opening with large rectangular ledged and braced horizontally sliding door on overhead wheels and runner which extend to the left over a segmental arched hatch opening with timber surround containing an arched timber sheeted bottom-hung door.
To right is a rectangular ledged timber door set in timber frame, leading into an outbuilding.
This block returns forward to form the north side of the yard: contains a small rectangular window to left of a wide rectangular timber ledged and braced door which leads to a pair of stables.

SETTING: The building stands well back from the main road within what used to be its own grounds but which are now being developed for housing, leaving a smaller garden than formerly. House now reached by a common driveway marked at the main road by a pair of new gate piers which have replaced the original gateway. Driveway continues past main entrance and around to north side as an extensive hard standing. Beyond this on all sides is a garden comprised of lawns with mature trees and shrubs. Standing to the west of the outbuildings is a greenhouse now derelict, with utilitarian sheds of no architectural interest further to the north-west.
Boundary to east is marked by wooden fencing; boundary to north marked partly by wire fencing; other boundaries currently not defined on site due to building works.
The overall site, of this house and the adjacent new houses being built, is bounded on the south along the main road to each side of the gateway by a hedge with mature trees behind it.

Historical information

Built in 1916 to the designs of the architect Thomas Houston of Belfast, apparently for a Miss Thompson, but it is first listed in the Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory of 1918 under the name of Mrs Thompson, The Grange, Muckamore; the builder was E. Fraser of Belfast. More recently it was owned by Jack Allen, Mayor of Antrim, until the mid-1990s when it was sold for development following his death.

References – Primary Sources
1. Irish Builder, 8 April 1916, p 166.
2. OS Map 1962-3, Co Antrim 50.
Secondary Sources
1. P. Larmour, 'A specialist in domestic architecture' (Thomas J. Houston 1879-1939), Perspective (The Journal of the RSUA), Vol 4, No 2, November/December 1995, pp 53-56.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is an example of an early 20th century house in Arts and Crafts style by a prominent Irish architect, which retains its original features, but has lost its original garden, setting, and front entrance gateway.