Westbrook House

This well-proportioned middle-sized house, of late Georgian or early Victorian appearance, retains its early form and character despite some modern alterations and the construction of extensions to accommodate new use as a guest house. Its integrity and visual appeal is enhanced by the retention of salient fabric such as the timber sliding sash windows at ground floor level and the natural slate roof. Its three-bay two-storey form with central doorway is typical of many middle class gentlemen’s houses, rectories etc. that were constructed throughout Ireland from the mid eighteenth century until the twentieth century, and is an example of the language of classical architecture stripped to its barest fundamental elements, which creates a fine dwelling. This house may incorporate the fabric of an earlier house or houses to site, one of which was constructed by a Judge Wilson in 1807. This was a long building located adjacent to the road to the south-west in c. 1835 (Ordnance Survey first edition map). The main part of the house as stands today was built between this date and c. 1860 (Griffith’s Valuation map of c. 1857). Wilson was also responsible for the construction of the adjacent elegant single-arch bridge (see 40902928) over the River Crana, known as ‘Wilson’s Bridge’, that provides access to the house from the south-west. The porch is a later addition (added after 1902; Ordnance Survey twentieth-five inch map), while a number of returns to the rear, including possible parts of the earlier house to site, were demolished post-1902. Westbrook was later the home of the Right Revd. V.G. Kearney in 1894 (Slater’s Directory), who was parish priest at the nearby St. Mary’s Catholic church (see 40902924) at nearby Cockhill to the north-west at this time. Set in a very attractive situation adjacent to the west bank of the Crana River, this house makes a positive contribution to the rural landscape to the north of Buncrana, and is an addition to the built heritage of the local area.