1 Rosetta Park

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey with attic, late Victorian detached house located on Rosetta Park - a quiet canted street that runs between the Ravenhill Road and the main part of Rosetta Park. The area is residential with mainly late Victorian semi-detached houses and some early twentieth century detached houses. The plan is rectangular and symmetrical with a 2 storey return.

Materials:

Roof: Natural Bangor blue slate with terracotta ridge-crest.
RWGs: uPVC
Walls: Red clay brick laid in English Garden Wall bond.
Windows: 1/1 uPVC sliding sash – double glazed

Front elevation (N)
The front elevation has a central doorway with full height canted bays either side. The panelled front door has glazed upper lights with a semi circular light above – set in an opening with stepped sandstone quoins, central keystone and a label moulding with carved heads-stops – representing a king and a queen. The queen carving has ‘GOOD MORNING’ incised in her crown. The windows in both bays are 1/1 sliding sash uPVC with sandstone sills and lintels. A small brick dentil course connects the openings below the ground floor lintel level and a slightly larger brick dentil course runs continuously under the first floor sills. The bays terminate in hipped slated roofs with elaborate brick eaves courses. The main gabled roof has tall red brick chimney stacks with projecting courses, at each gable.

Side elevation (E)
The ground floor has a canted bay to the left - as the front elevation. The dentilled courses continue to this elevation but the eaves courses only return a short distance and the gable has plain verge boards. There is a further window on the ground floor to the left of the bay; two to the first floor and a smaller one at attic level. – all as before.

Rear elevation (S)
The rear elevation has an original two storey return in brick with a cat-slide roof. Detailing is similar but the lintels are brick on end and the brick string courses are omitted. The main elevation (S) has French doors to the ground floor right; a top hung uPVC window to the left and a central staircase window on the first floor with its original geometric coloured glass intact. There are two other smaller windows to the first floor; two on the right-hand cheek and a door to the left. To the left of the return are two further windows.

Side elevation (W)
This elevation is blank apart from a single window to the attic and the two brick string courses continued from the front elevation. The west gable wall is continued at a height of 2.5m, screening the rear garden and almost connecting to a large single storey garage with a smaller outbuilding at right-angles to it. The garage has a hipped roof and a modern steel door and two painted timber windows with inward opening hoppers.

The house is set back c5m from the footpath and has two pairs of red brick pillars surmounted with ornate caps finished in sandstone balls. Apart from a short stretch of painted steel railings between the stained vertical timber pedestrian and vehicular gates, the majority of the front and side boundaries are waist high vertical stained boards. A spacious garden, mostly in grass with some mature trees and shrubs to the eastern boundary, stretches around the side and rear to meet the garage. There is some modern concrete paving and some older paving laid in a random pattern

Historical information

Rosetta Park lies within what were previously the grounds of Rosetta House, a pre-1807 residence probably built by the Coulson family, one of the several medium-sized semi-rural gentlemans’ abodes that characterised the Ormeau and Ravenhill areas before the spread of suburban growth in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. The street itself was developed by R.J. McConnell & Co. and laid out in 1887, with the red brick detached and semidetached dwellings constructed between this date and the early 1890s and most of the remainder added post-1945. The northern and eastern sections were originally known as ‘Rosetta Park – First Avenue’, with that to the south constituting ‘Rosetta Park – Second Avenue’, distinctions which appear to have been dropped around 1930.

No.1 Rosetta Park was built in 1887. The identity of the architect is not known. Initially named ‘Farnham Villa’ the first occupant appears to have been Thomas McCherry, a grocer, followed c.1894 by Alexander W. Child. Hugh Macauley, a linen merchant, took up the lease in c.1898, renamed the house ‘Lislaedh’, and is noted the 1901 census as living there with his wife, Lilian, their two grown-up children and two domestic servants, with the house itself a 'first class' dwelling with 13 rooms in use by the family. The widowed Mrs. Macauley, her widowed daughter, (Mrs. Mary McArdle), and a single domestic servant are noted as the occupants in the 1911 census.

By at least 1918 the property had passed to T.J. Smith, noted as a ‘Commissioner of Police’ in the street directory. He was succeeded c.1920 by Hugh Dougal, a carrier (of the firm of A. Dougal & Son Ltd.), who was awarded an M.B.E. in 1950 for ‘services as a prison visitor’. Mr. Dougal was still living at no.1 in 1980.

References – Primary sources
1 PRONI VAL12B/43A/18, annual valuation revision book, 1882-96
2 ‘Belfast and Province of Ulster Street Directory’, (Belfast News-Letter, Belfast), various dates from 1890 to 96
3 PRONI OS8/30/4/59, 60 1896
4 PRONI VAL12B/43A/34, annual valuation revision book, 1897-1905
9 Census of Ireland, 1901, 1911 [online]
10 PRONI OS8/30/5/59, 60 1903

Secondary sources
1 Royle, Stephen A., ‘Irish Historic Towns Atlas No.17 – Belfast, Part II, 1840 to 1900’ (Irish Royal Academy, 2007)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Two storey with attic, red brick detached late Victorian house built in 1887 - located in a spacious mature site in a quiet street off the Ravenhill Road 2.5 miles from the centre of Belfast. The house is well proportioned and retains good quality historic detailing both externally and internally, but is not of sufficient interest to warrant listing.