53 Sunnyside Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT7 3EX

53 Sunnyside Street is an end-terraced, two-storey redbrick house with an attic dormer, built around 1870. It forms part of a terrace of six similar houses lining the north side of Sunnyside Street in Belfast.

The building is L-shaped on plan, facing south. It has a pitched artificial slate roof with clay ridge tiles and a redbrick chimney stack rising from the west gable. A wall-head dormer is shared with the adjoining house (No. 51), featuring timber bargeboarding, redbrick walling, and a diminutive square-headed window opening. The eaves course comprises painted stone with plastic guttering and a polychromatic brick frieze below. The redbrick walling is laid in Flemish bond with sandstone quoins to the west end and a sandstone plinth course.

The front elevation is two windows wide, with square-headed window openings featuring painted masonry lintels and sills, now containing uPVC windows. A decorative painted masonry doorcase stands to the right, abutting that of the adjoining house. The doorcase comprises a square-headed door opening with uPVC door and rectangular overlight, flanked by plain pilasters on plinth blocks and oversized foliate console brackets (the eastern bracket shared with the neighbouring house). These support a shared lintel cornice with a decorative segmental stone panel above. The front garden is enclosed by hedge and accessed via a cobblelock footpath.

The west gable has a single modern ground-floor window opening with concrete lintel, and a pair of diminutive window openings at attic level. The rear elevation is abutted by a shared two-storey return. The original redbrick walling is laid in English garden wall bond with original square-headed window openings now containing uPVC windows. A pebbledash-rendered flat-roofed extension occupies the former rear yard, with the former back garden now forming part of a communal rear access lane.

The house has been extensively refurbished with considerable loss of original fabric, but retains its overall composition and decorative detailing. However, it is not considered of sufficient individual interest for listing.

Historical Context

The terrace was developed by Thomas Fitzpatrick, a prominent figure in Belfast's building trade. Fitzpatrick began as a sculptor in partnership with his brother William in the 1850s, and by the 1860s had become a general building contractor, remaining active until the 1890s or later. He is noted for fine examples of stone carving on Belfast buildings, including work on the Harbour Office and the Merchant Hotel.

The area west of the Ormeau Road was largely undeveloped until the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Although the land had been partly divided into spacious plots for large mansions, it remained sparsely built. This terrace was among the first developments along the newly laid-out Sunnyside Street and, until the early twentieth century, few other houses had been constructed along the road.

The terrace first appears in valuation records in 1869 as unfinished houses and yards, and was completed and valued in 1870 at £15 each. According to surviving Fitzpatrick Brothers papers, the houses were sold in pairs: Nos. 43 and 45 to Thomas Neill, and Nos. 51 and 53 to Samuel McCormick. Neill and McCormick each occupied one house and let the other. The middle pair passed through several landlords in quick succession, with both let out. Occupants were generally comfortable and employed as commercial travellers, clerks, and shopkeepers, with supervisory and clerical rather than manual work.

Two additional terraced houses were added to the east of the row between 1905 and 1909.

Occupancy records for No. 53 show: Samuel S McCormick, commercial traveller (1870); John Neill, gentleman (1880); Thomas A Morris, commercial traveller (1880); Martin Allen, commercial traveller (1884); Mrs Martin Allen (1887); W J Brown, manager of the Ormeau and Ulster brick works (1892); James Forsyth, cashier (1896); John Graham, furniture remover (1901); William Johnston, commercial traveller (1903); and Mary Martin (1910), a 68-year-old widow who ran a boarding house, as recorded in the 1911 census. She had two boarders: a van man from Wexford, his wife, and three children. Later tenants included Robert Mercer, traveller (1913), and D Duffin, bootmaker (1933), who remained resident until 1976. The house continues in use as a domestic dwelling.