«Picturesque two- and three-storey red brick clubhouse with five-storey square tower above entrance. Red-tiled roof well equipped with finials and chimneys, half timbered gables and dormers. An eyecatcher at the head of its peninsula set on a commanding headland, surrounded by an attractive whinstone wall, with clusters of New Zealand flax on its Seacliff Road boundary and veronica bushes at its Clifton Road side.
A wonderfully varied building in what the Irish Builder called the "old English style of architecture", in tuck-pointed Laganvale bricks and Peake's red roofing tiles, with Arts and Crafts windows set in segmental-headed openings and a verandah overlooking the bay. A recent barrel-roofed front porch addition (by Tony Wright) unfortunately obscures the carved stone entrance. Inside, there is a very rich Edwardian interior, complete with billiard room, elaborate stair case carved with ships and flowers, the tiller from Lord Cantelupe's 84-ton yacht Urania (which was wrecked on the shore nearby in 1890) and splendid "Anti-Fouling and Non Contagious Closets" in the gents.
In 1866, the Marquess of Dufferin & Ava (as he was to become), recently returned from a spell as Under-Secretary of State for India, decided to revive the Ulster Yaeht Cluh which had been founded in Bangor in 1806. The Marquess, who had taken his yacht Foam to Iceland and Spitzbergen in 1856 (as a result of which experiences he published his Letters from High Latitudes) was an experienced yachtsman; on his 1856 voyage he had tried a wide range of cures for seasickness including prussic acid, opium, champagne, ginger, mutton chops and tumblers of salt water. Presumably he found something effective, since his enthusiastic commodoreship of the club led to its receiving a Royal Charter in 1870, and becoming the centre for yachting near Belfast Lough.
In 1889, a young architect called Vincent Craig became a member of the club, and after lengthy discussions Craig eventually became the architect for a new "Club House, Office Houses and other erections". Messrs McLaughlin & Harvey's tender for the work was accepted, and the building opened on 12 April 1899, having cost £6396 12s 1d (50% over tender price!) with furnishings amounting to £1362 3s 2d.
By the end of the century the club's annual regatta attracted "all the crack boats in British waters", including those of "that boating grocer", as Kaiser Bill called Sir Thomas Lipton, who was blackballed from the Royal Yacht Squadron and therefore issued his challenge for the America's Cup from the Royal Ulster in 1898. His yacht Shamrock I lost, but Lipton, undaunted, issued four more challenges from the RUYC, his last being in 1929. The Club has an interesting room of Lipton memorabilia. (See also Seacourt in Princetown Road).»
-- Source
The house is located in 101 Clifton Road, but it can be better seen from Seacliff Road.