Popular Derry hairdresser's house for sale after 85 years in the Willman family

The house was built in 1904 by Mr Henry Thompson, and was valued at £26 at that time. A woman called Mrs Hamilton lived in the house for a short while before Mr Thompson died in 1924, leaving the house to his daughter and son-in-law. Mr Romain Willmann bought the house in 1938 and the house has stayed in the family since then. It is currently owned by Romain’s daughter, Terry Willman.

Terry loved the house she grew up in and she has very fond memories of the life she had there. “Growing up, all the children played in the streets and there was every religion and every age group and we played a lot of cricket and rounders. My father was very cosmopolitan, so one time we were in London and we went into Harrods and we were told to choose a toy. We didn't know what to choose so I picked a cricket bat, and my sister got a cricket bat too! When we were playing cricket, we had the bats so one of the boys would say, “I'll take you all on, I’ll go on one side with you all in the other” but we had the cricket bats so there would be a row and we would go home! We sleighed down the street in the snow and we all had bikes. When I think back on it, it was a very carefree and innocent childhood.

“It was a kind of a conceit at the beginning of the century, it was Foyle College land, and it was a very special street. There are 11 houses and they're all the same design, but they're all individual. If you notice the apex in each house, the middle one has wood going up one way, and four others have it going another way, and the others have it going another way. You’ll find that in the coloured glass windows, there's a slight variation from one to the other. They all had those railings, but they were all removed at the beginning of the Second World War to make armaments. I only put the new railings in last year, and the design on them is matching the design on the windows. That's my pride!”

The Willman family are very well-known in Derry, with Romain Willman owning a popular hairdressing salon on the Strand Road and his son, Terry’s brother, Noel, being a famous actor.

"My daddy was from Alsace, in France,” Terry said. “And he came to Derry in 1909 via a town in France and then through Paris, then London, where he learned his English, and the he went to Cork. A man in Cork had a relation who owned the shop in Derry and that was how he got the shop. Daddy was interned in the First World War because their name was German. Over the top of the shop was ‘R. Wilmann’ with two Ns so, after the First World War, he dropped the last N.

"Daddy’s wife died in about 1936, and that was when he bought number 18. At the time he bought it, he had a family of nine, and they were aged from 27 down to about seven, so when he married my mother and took her into the home, it was full of family and all the ups and downs of family life, especially for a second wife who then had my sister and I. They all left, and daddy died in 1956, so it was just my mother, my sister and I."

Although Terry’s sad to see it go, she hopes a new family will create as many happy memories in her house as hers has.

"The house deserves a new family and a new start,” she said.