Merville Garden Village

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A planned mid-twentieth century housing estate comprising approximately 450 dwelling units, laid out in Garden Village style to designs by E. Prentice Mawson in 1947-1949. The estate is located to the west side of the Shore Road, in the grounds of Merville House (HB21/06/004B).

The estate occupies an elevated upwardly sloping site, and is screened at road level by a symmetrical multi-bay four-storey flat roofed range containing shops to ground floor and flats above. Rectangular-on-plan, facing east, with lower three-storey blocks (three windows wide) breaking forward to either end. Walling is dark red brick with flat roof concealed behind brick parapet. Openings are rectangular (some double-width), cast-concrete sills, variety of window treatments. The flats have ground floor access placed at intervals between shop fronts (all modern). All ground floor openings open directly onto a pavement with cast-concrete canopy over, supported on painted paired cast-iron columns; shared flats entrances at equally spaced intervals; doors are set in projecting brick reveals, projecting pilaster strips to either side, glazed top panels with four panel (vertically arranged) side panel to left having original painted flat numbers and intercom. Rear elevation is plainly detailed, each unit with a projecting cast concrete balcony.

Site slopes steeply upwards towards Merville House (described separately HB21/06/004B). Access roads sweep round to either side leading to main body of estate, located to rear of Merville House. The dwellings consist of three main types: four-storey flat-roofed multi-occupancy blocks, ‘cottage flats’, and single dwellings arranged in terraces or semi-detached. A number of flat units are laid out at the foot of the main estate. The remainder are laid out around a central spine, which is formed from the original grassed avenue to Merville house, which runs down the centre and is still bounded by closely planted mature trees; it contains an early circular rubble stone gate pier with conical rubble cap. Two straight access roads flank this avenue and the dwellings are laid parallel to the roadside or arranged in perpendicular cul-de-sacs to either side. All units have grassed areas to front, undivided by hedges or boundaries. The single dwellings and cottage flats have small enclosed gardens. Vestiges of original former field boundaries are in evidence, and an eighteenth century walled garden remains to the south end of the estate, now used as allotments.

Multi-occupancy blocks:

Rectangular on plan; flat roofs; gutters concealed behind parapet, cast-iron downpipes with square hopper heads at regularly spaced intervals; cement rendered chimneystacks, multiple pots. White painted roughcast walling over black painted smooth rendered plinth. Regularly spaced openings to each floor. Communal entrance blocks have elongated windows with central vertical mullion; that to first floor with projecting architrave with moulded drip stone and concrete balconette enclosed by decorative mild steel railings. Communal entrance doors in neo-Georgian moulded cast-concrete surrounds with segmental pedimented entablature. Double-leaf timber doors consist of two bottom panels surmounted by eight-pane glazed panel over; original number plates set into top panes. Accessed by bull-nosed terrazzo step.

Cottage flats:

Detached two-bay two storey blocks, located to cul-de-sac corners. Rectangular on plan. Hipped tiled roofs; overhanging eaves; rendered chimneystack with four pots; half-round cast-iron rainwater goods. White painted rendered walling, contrasting black painted plinth. Variety of window treatments. Principal (main artery facing) elevations are three windows wide to each floor. Elevations facing onto cul-de-sac are two windows wide to each floor. All ground floor windows have louvred timber shutters. Each flat is accessed off enclosed entry accessed by a screen wall with round-headed arched opening. Round headed entrance doors, smooth rendered surround with keyblock and simple moulding at arch springing level. First floor flat accessed by concrete steps, half-turning up yard facing elevation to round-headed arched open vestibule.

Single dwellings:

Hipped tiled roofs, overhanging eaves, rendered chimneystack; half-round cast-iron rainwater goods. White painted smooth rendered walling. Majority of windows are uPVC replacements (replacing multi-pane metal-framed side-hung casements), cast concrete sills, black-painted timber shutters. Principal elevations consist of two openings to each floor; door with pedimented painted timber canopy on console brackets, accessed by concrete steps. Attached side gate access with boundary walls to rear yards sweeping up to form high gate piers on which is placed a simple pergola.

Historical information

Merville Garden Village was constructed 1947-1949 by Ulster Garden Villages Ltd, to designs by E. Prentice Mawson (Larmour, p103).

Ulster Garden Villages Ltd. was founded in 1946 by Thomas Arlow McGrath against a backdrop of urgent post-war housing need in Belfast and the surrounding area. Few new houses had been built in the period 1939 to 1945, and much of the existing housing stock had been damaged during the war, if not destroyed outright. Existing housing was often substandard and unsanitary, and there were persistent problems with overcrowding. A CAIN project case study on nearby Rathcoole states that in 1945, according to a NIHT report, Belfast had the greatest average number of people per acre of open space and the most crowded living conditions of any major industrial city in the UK. Sixty per cent of the population lived in wards which were so overcrowded that in order to meet health standards only one-third of the residents would have been allowed to remain 'in situ'. Belfast had an infant mortality rate of 97 per 1000 births.

Large housing estates had been virtually unknown in Belfast, and, despite a series of housing legislation and development programmes in the UK, Northern Ireland lacked a systematic approach to planning. McGrath’s vision was idealistic, aimed at promoting welfare and a strong sense of community. Dwellings were finished to a high standard and landscaping and community facilities were seen as an integral part of the design process, as summed up in an early booklet by McGrath: “Town planning, site selection and house planning demand expert treatment by fore-most authorities. One cannot stress too much that here lies the fundamental difference between order and chaos, beauty and ugliness, drudgery and happiness, health and illness, contentment and instability, homes and slums, success and failure.” (McCreary, 6)

Thomas Arlow McGrath was born into a working class family in Lurgan in 1896. Having trained initially as a cabinet maker, and following service in the First World War, he formed a successful building business with his carpenter brothers, Andy and Bob. McGrath was an admirer of the Garden Village movement which had developed in England, listing notable examples of the work of various housing societies such as Bourneville and Letchworth, and commenting: “An important part of the policy of the housing society movement is that of giving every attention not only to the welfare of its estates, and care in the maintenance of its properties, but to the welfare of tenants.” (quoted in McCreary, 20).

E. Prentice Mawson (1895-1954), past President of the Institute of Landscape Architects, was appointed consulting architect. Mawson was the son of internationally renowned English landscape architect Thomas A. Mawson. He himself had trained at the London School of Architecture and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. His philosophical approach to planning had a sound commercial basis and dovetailed well with that of McGrath: "Good design and beauty are commercial assets, quite apart from their psychological effect on everyone."( Mawson, 1934). The design of Merville was widely praised: Stanley Gale noted in 1949: “In the Merville Estate in Belfast, the designer Mr E Prentice Mawson has produced an outstanding example that should set a new standard in both layout and in the grouping and design of the units.”

The estate was endowed with shops and a community centre (having classes in drama, singing, music and other activities). There was also a small theatre, and landscaped gardens included the original walled garden of Merville House, as well as various landscape features such as field boundary fragments.

Merville Garden Village was designated a conservation area in 1995. The Merville Garden Village Residents Association is one of the oldest resident’s associations in Northern Ireland, having been formally constituted in 1975 and having 249 subscribing households.

References:

Secondary Sources

1. McCreary, Alf Making A Difference: The Story of Ulster Garden Villages Ltd; Belfast, 1999)
2. Larmour, P: Belfast, An Illustrated Architectural Guide; Belfast, 1987
3. Community Archive on the Internet (CAIN Project). [Internet Source].
Available from: . Accessed 10/10/08

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Merville Garden Village is a post war housing estate built in the Garden Village style in the former grounds of Merville House (HB21/06/004B). The estate is one of the best preserved of its kind in Northern Ireland, notable for the unity of the design and for the carefully planned layout which includes fragments of original landscape features such as hedges, field boundaries and the original avenue to Merville House. Restrained neo-Georgian detailing enlivens the crisp facades of the multi-occupancy blocks, and the smaller dwellings are neatly proportioned in small groups, arranged around undivided green spaces. While having suffered almost ubiquitous changes to window and door treatments, many salient original features remain intact, particularly to communal areas and the overall harmony of the group has been preserved. The group has a prominent place in the history of public housing in a national context, and is a fine example of the ideals of town planning and the design aesthetic of the time. It is certainly noteworthy but estates such as this are not candidates for listing, the area being more appropriately protected by its Conservation Area Status.