2 Sans Souci Park

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey Arts and Crafts house designed in 1927 by James P Rush with a butterfly plan, half timbered rendered walls and Rosemary clay tiled roof. The plan is almost symmetrical about the front door with angled gabled wings having projecting upper storeys, supported on timber brackets. It is located on the corner of Sans Souci Park and Malone Road within the Malone Conservation area, in a mainly residential area of late Victorian and early twentieth century housing.

Materials
Walls: Painted roughcast render with half timbering
Windows: Replacement painted double glazed timber top and side opening lights
Roof : Rosemary clay tiles
RW goods: uPVC

Front elevation faces SW and has a central Tudoresque hardwood door with fixed lights either side – the windows have painted bullnose sills. The door is set underneath a mono-pitched roof that spans between the two projecting wings and covers a partially enclosed veranda supported on timber posts. The lower panels of the posts are infilled with herringbone patterned rustic clay bricks. At each side of the veranda are unusual V-shaped windows. Directly above the door is a long strip window to the first floor.

Facing the entrance gates is the left-hand wing - elevation (W). It has a canted bay window on the ground floor and a projecting upper floor supported on brackets at each side. The upper floor has a smaller projecting central window supported on three brackets and its face lines up with a half timbered gable above. The gable of the other wing (S) is similar although the ground floor canted bay window is narrower.

The side elevation (N) is blind to the front section but towards the centre has a projecting gabled first floor supported at the corners on two timber posts. Underneath this bay are two windows and above a centrally positioned one. Beyond the projecting bay, to the rear, is a further window and a door on the ground floor with a window over.

The rear elevation (E) of the main part of the house has a two-storey gabled bay to the right hand side with a small cat-slide roof to its left. Beyond this is a window and a projecting chimney stack built with brown rustic clay brick stack with projecting upper courses. There is a similar chimney stack on the North elevation. A lean-to garage with Rosemary clay tiled roof is attached to the gabled bay and on the left is a sun room with a faceted end now covered with profiled asbestos roofing. This sun-room may have been added at a slightly later date. There is a 16 light steel window to the garage which also has modern steel up-and-over door on the North side.

The site is entered through replacement side hung timber gates designed in a complementary Arts and Crafts style and painted to match the half timbering on the house. There is a matching pedestrian gate further along the Sans Souci Park boundary which is otherwise a tall hedge. The South boundary is also hedged and that on the North, a timber fence.
There is a substantial grassed area to the font alongside a modern concrete paved vehicular turning area which extends down the North side to the garage at the rear and as a path to the front door. The rear garden is mainly grassed.

Historical information

Background – Sans Souci (consisting of the main San Souci Park, Sans Souci Lane and the area between fronting on to Malone Road) was laid out in late 1890s on the grounds formerly belonging to a pre-1832 house of that name, probably built in the 1770s when the Donegall estate began to sub-divide what were formerly known as the ‘Course’ lands between Malone and Stranmillis and lease these to farmers. The house itself, rebuilt in 1836-37 and subsequently occupied by the Purdon, Pim and Lindsay families, was vacated around 1895, and in 1899 the grounds were broken up sold off as ‘beautiful villa sites’. The old house, now set within a much restricted 1 acre plot, was initially offered up for lease also, but within a year or so had been demolished and the whole of its former grounds opened for development. The new principal street was laid out in c.1899 with most of the new plots arranged to back on to the looping V-shaped course of the boundary of the former garden itself. The first of the new dwellings (5 pairs of semis – present nos.6-8, 31-33 and 35-37, 1-2 Sans Souci Lane and 60-62 Malone Road were completed in the same year or that following, with nos.10-12, 26, 28, 34-36, 38-40, 41 and 43-45 up by 1911, and the majority the remainder – including a large badminton hall to the east - following in the 1920s, filling up much of the land which in the decade of so prior to this had been utilised as allotments. Recent years have witnessed apartment development to the southern corner of Sans Souci Park, with the site of the sports hall (latterly the property of QUB) taken up with one large apartment block.

No.2 – This house was built in 1927 to designs by James P. Rush, an architect then based in Belfast and later of Lisburn and Dungannon for a Miss M.L. Trimble. The Misses Trimble are named as the occupants in the 1928 street directory, and by 1932 a Miss M.L. Gardner, a masseuse, [the former Miss Trimble?] was living there. Miss Gardner was still living there in the early 1950s and may be the Mrs. M.L. Law (noted as a physiotherapist) who is listed in the directories from at least 1955 until the early 1970s. Frank H. Malpress was in residence by 1975, and was still there in 1995.

References – Primary sources
1 PRONI VAL12B/43A/27 annual valuation revision book, 1897-1905
2 ‘Northern Whig’ 10 November 1898, 30 January, 2 February, 3 March 1899
3 PRONI VAL7B/3/19 valuation of Belfast, 1900
4 Census of Ireland, 1901, 1911 [online - http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/]
5 OS town plans of Belfast 1901-02, 1920, 1931, 1937, 1957
6 ‘Belfast and Province of Ulster Street Directory’, (Belfast News-Letter, Belfast), various dates from 1901 to 1996
7 ‘Belfast News-Letter’ 5 July 1907 [James Morton obituary], 6 June 1916 [sale notice], 6 February, 7 July 1917

Secondary sources
1 Carleton, S.T., ‘The growth of South Belfast’, (unpublished QUB MA thesis), 1967
2 Rowan, A.J. and Brett, C.E.B., Historic Buildings…Queens University of Belfast, (UAHS, 1968)
3 Larmour, Paul 1991 The architectural heritage of Malone and Stranmillis, (Belfast), pp.154-56

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Two storey Arts and Crafts house designed in 1927 by James P Rush with a butterfly plan, half timbered rendered walls and Rosemary clay tiled roof. The plan is almost symmetrical about the front door with angled gabled wings having projecting upper storeys, supported on timber brackets. It is located on the corner of Sans Souci Park and Malone Road within the Malone Conservation area, in a mainly residential area of late Victorian and early twentieth century housing.
A good example of a modest early twentieth century house, in the Arts and Crafts style, located within the Malone Conservation Area.