Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB23/13/004

Address :
21 Knockmore Park Bangor Co Down BT20 3SL

Townland:

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Survey 2:
Record Only

Date of Listing:

Date of De-listing:

Current Use:
House

Former Use
House

Conservation Area:
No

Industrial Archaeology:
No

Vernacular:
No

Thatched:
No

Monument:
No

Derelict:
No

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OS Map No:
115/12SW

IG Ref:
J4956 8184

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Owner Category

Commercial

Exterior Description And Setting

A two-storey inter-war house in a Mediterranean villa style with rendered walls and green pantiled roof. It stands in a suburban
setting, in a residential area, facing the public road but set back slightly within its own garden. The main entrance faces north. The north elevation is a triune composition, comprising a central entrance bay which has a parapet roof, flanked to each side by hipped roof end bays, the roofs divided into three portions by raking raised copings returning back from the extremities of the centre bay and rising up to a pair of chimneys. Walling is painted smooth render, with a slightly projecting plinth, and a swept horizontal drip moulding at window-head level in the end bays except where it arches in a semi-circle over a window. There is also a shallow keystone to the coping of the parapet. Roofs are of green Roman tiles with prominent ridges, the hipped roofs oversailing the end bays on flat soffits. There are two short chimneys of octagonal form, smooth rendered, and carrying stub pots. Rainwater goods are of upvc. Windows are modern replacement hardwood fixed lights on top-hung vents for what would have been originally small-paned windows either in casement or in sliding sash form, and probably of neo-Goergian character. They comprise a set of three semi-circular arched openings on the first floor of the central entrance bay, with margins to the arched top lights, flanked by small square openings in the side bays. In the ground floor of the side bays are both large and small openings, the larger with the swept plaster drip moulding arching over them. Cills are formed by two layers of projecting tiles of corrugated profile. The entrance is recessed in a rectangular opening and contains a panelled double-door surmounted by a flat concrete canopy supported on shaped brackets ornamented with a patera. Fixed to the underside of the canopy is an original splayed hexagonal ceiling light. Extending to the left, and set back slightly from the front wall plane, is a single storey double garage with its smooth rendered wall sweeping up to the eaves level of the house, forming a screen to a side yard. An elongated ball finial surmounts the left hand extremity of the garage façade. The garage doors are of modern up-and-over type, surmounted by five-paned fanlights. The west elevation is of similar materials to the front. There are three rectangular windows to the first floor, modern hardwood replacements, as previous, but with timber shutters fixed to each side of each one and painted dark green; the window heads are formed by the flat soffit of the eaves. In the ground floor is a projecting canted bay with flat lead-covered roof. Its windows are also all modern replacements. The south or rear elevation is of similar character and materials to the front and also of triune composition, with a similar arrangement of parapet and hipped roofs, except that the central bay has plain projecting pilaster piers at the extremities and its parapet rakes up very slightly to the centre, without a keystone. There are three rectangular windows to the first floor of the central bay, of modern fixed light and top-hung type with tile cills. Below them are three segmental headed windows, similarly glazed, in the ground floor. The left hand bay contains a pair of large coupled openings set in semi-circular arched recesses, the one to the left containing a modern rectangular glazed door, the one to the right containing a modern rectangular window, both surmounted by fanlights with radial margins. The pier between the openings contains an engaged semi-column, of Tuscan type, surmounted by a cornice block from which the arches spring, and resting on a concrete cill extending between the two openings. The bay to the right contains a rectangular door and a rectangular window, both set in semi-circular arches formed by the swept drip moulding of the render on the wall, the coupled arches corresponding in profile to those of the left hand bay. The east elevation is similar to the west, with three similar windows to the first floor. Most of the ground floor is covered by the garage block projecting to the right and a shallower lean-to projection to the left, roofed with green pantiles. SETTING: The house is approached by a short tarmac driveway and path from a gateway of plain square smooth rendered piers and a pair of timber gates which each contain five square openings corresponding to the fanlights in the garage. The front boundary is formed by vertical timber boards with rounded tops. There is a small grassed garden to the front which contains a pair of palm-like trees forming a vestigial gateway to the front door. To the rear is a large grassed garden containing some mature trees. Adjacent plots contain houses of similar scale, but most notably, the house next door to the east is also in a Mediterranean villa style with similar roofing and chimneys, reputedly designed by the same architect at the same time as this one.

Architects

Smith, R.I. and Rippingham T.F.O.

Historical Information

Built in 1924, reportedly to the designs of Roland Ingleby Smith and Thomas Rippingham, official Northern Ireland government architects working here in a private capacity. It was built for Major Percy E. Shepherd, Director of Works for the Government of Northern Ireland. References - Secondary Sources 1. Information from Ian McQuiston in 2007. 2. NIEA research on architects by Terence Reeves-Smyth SMITH, Ronald Ingleby., Architect With the partition of Ireland and the creation of the new state of Northern Ireland in 1921, a new department was needed to assume the functions of the old Board of Works within the fledging state. A new Chief Architect’s Branch was accordingly established within the Ministry of Finance in 1922 and a number of Englishmen were recruited, notably Ronald Ingleby Smith, who was appointed Senior Architect and R. S. Wilshere. Like many other architect’s of his generation, Smith’s tended to prefer designing in a neo-Classical style. A good example of his work is Stranmillis College on Stranmillis Road, designed in 1924. This is a very Frenchified neo-Georgian building with a palatial layout on an axial plan. It is beautifully built with walls of Cornish purple brick on a base of Portland stone and a cornice and other dressings of the same stone. Another building is the old Agriculture Building in the Queen’s University of Belfast, now the Department of Geosciences on Elmwood Avenue, designed by Smith and built in 1924-8. This is a lively treatment of neo-Georgian architecture with Wrenian swags and a Mannerist doorway. Its planned for third storey was added 1952 by Thomas Rippingham, whom Smith had brought to Belfast as a junior architect within the office in 1922-23. It is perhaps noteworthy that in both buildings, Rippingham was almost certainly responsible for most of the detailing, if not much of the original design. Indeed, it would appear that from his arrival in the office, Rippingham was the most talented architect of the team and a man that Smith relied upon to help with his own buildings. A notably example of their partnership is Telephone House on Cromac Street, which was designed by both Smith and Rippingham in 1932-4. This building is an enormous steel framed block that manages to be modernist yet also neo-Georgian. Subsequently, a series of plain neo-Georgian satellite exchanges were built at various points in the city under direction of Smith. Notably examples were at Paulett Avenue and Windsor Park (1933). One of Smith’s last works was the Tomb of Lord Craigavon in the grounds of Stormont, completed in 1942. Ingleby Smith died just before its completion and inevitably perhaps, his post as Chief Architect to the Ministry of Finance was filled by Thomas Rippingham. RIPPINGHAM, Thomas F.O., Architect T.F.O Rippingham (‘Thomas’ to some, ‘Rip’ to others) was one of the most distinguished architects to work in Northern Ireland during the 20th century. He was a very reserved and retiring English architect, who initially served in the Board of Works in London, and as a young architect was recruited by Ronald Ingleby Smith and R. S. Wilshere, to join the architect’s branch of the Department of Finance in Belfast in 1922-23. During the 1920s he worked directly under Ingleby Smith, and from an early period it was evident that Rippingham was an extremely talented architect. However, Smith always exercised his right to sign every drawing emanating from the office, so many buildings believed to be by Smith, were in fact by Rippingham. By the 1930s he was designing many buildings in his own right and with the death of Smith in the early 1940s, succeeded him as the Chief Architect in the Ministry of Finance. Thomas Rippingham invariably used the preferred styles of the period - neo-Classical or neo-Georgian, but was never afraid to merge functional and traditional ideas in his designs or to use a modernist idiom. He is perhaps best remembered for his Cregagh Housing Estate, built to a revolutionary new plan during the five years after the war. Inevitably, considering his post in the Ministry of Finance, he was primarily engaged in public buildings from the time of his arrival in Ulster in the 1920s to his retirement in the 1956. Only on very rare occasions did he design one-off private dwellings. Among his many public buildings were the new police stations, built in the rural areas in the 1920s and 1930s. There were inevitable variations in their standard design to suite local needs, but these stations are very distinctive. One good example that survives is the Bushmills Station, designed in the 1920s – built in a Georgian style with sash windows, recessed arches on the ground floor, wide eaves, hipped roof and gable ended chimney. Another good surviving example of these ‘White Pattern’ stations is at Cloughmills. Many of his public buildings, as noted above, were in a neo-Georgian style. For example the post office at Banbridge or the horizontally stressed GPO Sorting Office at Smithfield in Belfast, designed in 1938, but now sadly demolished. In the Telephone House of 1932-5, which he designed with Smith, he used Art Deco motifs to the vertically recessed window panels of this large and important steel framed building. During and after the war he tended to experiment and use other styles. In 1944 he designed the physical education centre, called Henry Garrett Building, at Stranmillis College, the state funded teacher’s training college in Belfast. Here functional ideas and traditional values are wielded together. A distinctive feature of this building and one which became something of a hall-mark of Rippingham’s architectural style was the use of the circular window within the design. After the war Rippingham was inevitably involved in factory building – this being the great preoccupation of the time. His best known example is the Bairnswear factory in Armagh, designed in 1950. Here he used a memorable stairwell in manner of the great German Architect Erich Mendelsohn. However, there is little doubt that Rippingham’s most outstanding work, both during and after the war, was his design of new housing estates. Aside from the Cregagh Housing Estate, he is best remembered for his semi-detached housing for power workers at Ballylumford, Co. Antrim (1943) and the much larger estate of mainly terraced houses for the Admiralty in Antrim Town (1944). These were all built in the modern idiom, using rustic brick, concrete surrounds, mono-pitched roofs and some of the inevitable porthole windows. Rippingham’s most admired housing scheme was the Cregagh Housing Estate on Cregagh Road, and Mount Merrion Avenue, Cregagh. It was his first big project after the end of the war and was undertaken by the Ministry of Finance on behalf of the newly formed Northern Ireland Housing Trust. The development comprised 924 dwellings over a 91-acre site and the houses were designed to have a continuous frontage with no unsightly views of back gardens. A strictly utilitarian type of design and structure was employed, due to the scarcity of materials at the time – brickwork was confined to the outer walls due to a shortage of bricklayers and the houses were given flat concrete roofs because if a lack of roofing tiles and slates. Shops and community buildings built to flank the approaches and in the central open space a Primary School was designed by Rippingham and built 1949 to original design. The whole scheme, which was built between 1945 and 1949, won universal praise at the time. Delegations of architects and housing officials came here from all over the United Kingdom during the 1940s to study its layout. Subsequently, it won the Housing Medal awarded by the Ministry of Health in 1951 for the best post war estate in Northern Ireland. During his career Rippingham was always very sympathetic to historic buildings and worked on a regular basis with officials from Ancient Monuments Branch. One of his first tasks was the conservation of Hillsborough Castle from Private to Government House, while one of his last was the restoration of Carrickfergus Castle. Unusually, for such a successful and multi-talented architect, Rippingham designed very few individual private dwellings. Indeed, he never even built a house for himself and lived his working life in rented accommodation. It is said that the reason for this lay in a disagreement with his wife; he apparently wanted a duel living area and dining room and she wanted a separate dining room and living area. Most of those houses that he did design were for close colleagues or friends. Among the few examples known include The Warren, Donaghadee, built for a colleague, a house at Drumbo built for his daughter (now demolished) and a wonderfully attractive gabled house called Seamount, in Cultra, Holywood, probably built in the early 1930s. . His last public building was the Petty Sessions Court House in Chichester Street Belfast. He retired in 1956.

Criteria for Listing

Architectural Interest

Not listed

Historic Interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is an inter-war house in an uncommon Mediterranean villa style, its design attributed to two of the leading architects of their period in Northern Ireland, R.I. Smith and T.F.O. Rippingham. It exhibits such characteristic features on the exterior as green pantiled roofs, and coupled and tripled semi-circular arched openings, with the addition of an unusual detail in the engaged Tuscan column which appears both on the exterior and interior. It is one of a few private commissions by two architects who were normally confined to official government work, and is in an unusual style, their usual work being normally in a more conventional English inspired neo-Georgian style. This is a house of limited architectural interest however, given its late date and that its original appearance and character have been adversely affected by inappropriate replacement windows.

General Comments

Date of Survey

04 January 2008