12 College Green, Belfast

12 College Green, Belfast is a two-storey terraced house with attic, built in 1876 and facing south. Constructed of red brick in Flemish bond with painted masonry dressings, it forms part of a longer Victorian terrace (numbers 2–26 inclusive) that runs along College Green between Botanic Avenue and Rugby Road, within Queens Conservation Area. The building has group value with the adjoining houses at numbers 10 and 14 College Green. It now serves as part of Queen's University's School of Social Science, Education and Social Work, incorporating numbers 12–24 inclusive (number 16 is missing), with internal connections and two-storey gabled extensions added around 2004 where original returns once stood.

The roof is natural slate with a duo-pitched form, featuring black clay ridge tiles and two red brick chimneys with corbelled brick copings and yellow clay pots—one shared with number 10 and one with number 14. Wall-head dormers with hipped roofs sit on both front and rear pitches, the latter positioned above the modern extension. Roof guttering is a parapet gutter on the south elevation with cast metal rainwater pipe.

The south elevation, the principal façade, is asymmetrical. The ground floor features an entrance to the left within a projecting surround with moulded cornice hood and decorative recessed roundels, and a single-storey canted bay to the right. The bay windows have stop-chamfered detail to the head and jambs, with deep bull-nosed stone cills recessed between the jambs, which extend to the plinth. Above the bay are decorative round and diamond-shaped incisions featuring abstract cross, thistle and clover motifs. The entrance door is a square-headed timber framed four-panelled replacement with plain glass fanlight in a round-arched opening with roll-edge detail.

At first floor level are two equal-sized square-headed windows with moulded string course forming the cill. These windows have moulded surrounds with cornice hood enriched with diamond-head moulding projecting over a row of dentils. Heavy eaves supported on scrolled brackets run across the elevation above a deep plain frieze and moulded string course, all painted. The attic is lit by a wall-head dormer containing paired windows with canted heads and stop-chamfered lintels, a shared projecting cill, and 2/2 panes.

The ground floor windows are single glazed timber framed double-hung sliding sashes with 1/1 panes, as are most windows throughout unless otherwise noted. The leaded roof of the canted bay and other painted dressings (including those to the bay, entrance, and first-floor windows) are probably combined stucco and dressed stone beneath paint. A deep continuous base plinth with sub-floor vents and moulded top runs along the south elevation.

The west and east elevations are abutted by numbers 10 and 14 College Green respectively. A two-storey extension extends from the rear, fenestrated mainly to the east with roughly three bays wide, alternating vertical bands of red brick walling and smooth render that culminate in flat-roofed dormers. This extension features polyester powder-coated windows within first-floor dormers and full-height glazed doors at ground floor, with an artificial slate roof and modern roof-lights set along the slope to the west face.

The north elevation, facing rear, is almost entirely obscured by the modern extension extending the full length of the yard to College Green Mews. Original fabric remaining includes red brick walling in English Garden Wall bond with soldier-coursed headers, a sliding sash window to the right, and a round-arched timber framed sliding sash window with 2/2 panes and projecting stone cill within a wall-head dormer to the left. This round-arched window is likely original.

The front boundary is lined with a concrete dwarf wall and modern metal railings matching adjacent properties. The small front garden is paved with precast concrete slabs, as is the entrance step. The modern extension extends the full width of the property to the north boundary with College Green Mews. A rear yard shared with number 14 provides amenity space comprising ramped paths to a ground-floor terrace and planted beds with red brick retaining walls topped by modern metal handrails and uprights, painted.