5 College Place North, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 6BE

No. 5 College Place North is an end-of-terrace, two-storey red brick house built around 1840, forming one of four similar houses in a small cul-de-sac to the north of College Square North, Belfast. It is a rare surviving example of late-Georgian and early-Victorian terraced housing at this scale within Belfast city centre, and together with its neighbours retains much of its original historic fabric and character, forming a coherent 19th-century terrace.

EXTERIOR

The house is rectangular on plan, facing southeast. The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. The brick chimney stack to the north party wall (shared with No. 3) has been replaced and is fitted with clay pots. Cast-iron guttering on iron brackets runs along a brick eaves course.

The walls are red brick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing. Window openings are flat-arched with gauged brickwork, painted sandstone sills, rendered reveals, and replacement 6-over-6 timber sash windows. The front elevation is two windows wide.

The front door opening is square-headed and positioned to the right. It contains a four-panelled timber door with bolection mouldings and a rectangular overlight, flanked by large plain console brackets supporting a hood cornice. Two stone steps lead down from the door to the front pavement, with the remains of a plinth wall from a former railed front area still visible. The south side elevation abuts No. 7, and the north side elevation abuts No. 3. The rear elevation was not inspected.

SETTING

No. 5 forms part of a terrace of four similar houses lining the northwest side of College Place North at the entrance to an industrial yard, situated to the north of College Square North.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The terrace — comprising Nos. 3–9 College Place North and Nos. 11–13 College Place North — had been constructed by the time of the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858. It does not appear on the first edition of 1832–33, which shows the site as vacant. At that time Belfast's development was concentrated to the north and southeast, but the opening of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in 1814 and the population growth of the Victorian period accelerated the construction of terraced streets to the west of the city centre. College Place North is understood to have been built as part of the development of the fashionable residential area surrounding the Institution; a Historic Buildings Branch report of 1992 described the terrace as having been erected as mews houses for the servants working in the large houses fronting onto College Square.

Griffith's Valuation of 1860 records that Nos. 3–13 College Place North were owned by Thomas McCammon, a tanner, leather merchant and flour miller who operated from a tannery on King Street directly to the north. McCammon was also lessor of a number of other dwellings in the area. He leased No. 5 to a John Ireland, whose property was valued at £9. Ireland was employed in the textile industry, manufacturing sewed muslin, a popular fabric in the mid-19th century, and is recorded as occupant until at least 1868 in the Belfast Street Directories. In 1877 and 1880 the address was occupied by Samuel Saunders, a local foreman and copper worker, though the Annual Revisions continued to record Ireland as tenant throughout this period.

By the Belfast Revaluation of 1900 the terrace had passed to Samuel Gibson, a druggist and general merchant with properties on King Street. No. 5 was revalued at £10 10s and let at an annual rent of £17. The revaluation did not include specific details for No. 5, but the adjoining Nos. 7 and 9 were described at that time as two-storey dwellings of approximately 50 years in age, heated by gas and containing five rooms excluding a kitchen — conditions likely similar at No. 5.

The 1901 Census records No. 5 as occupied by James Boyd, a master horse shoer aged 53 (Presbyterian), who lived with his wife Jane (50) and son Charles (15). The building return describes it as a second-class private dwelling with six inhabited rooms. By the 1911 Census the occupant was John Brady (66, Church of Ireland), a retired boiler maker, living with his wife Margaret Jane (64). Brady died in 1911, though the Annual Revisions continued to record his name as tenant until their cancellation in 1930. By 1918 a Mr J. W. Stilling, a reed maker, was occupying the property.

The First General Revaluation of 1935 adjusted the value of No. 5 to £14 10s, at which point the house was in the possession of a John Hall, whose family continued to reside there through the Second General Revaluation, which commenced in 1956. By the end of that revaluation in 1972 the house was slightly reduced in value to £14 and was occupied by a Mr or Mrs E. Hall.

CRITICAL RECEPTION AND LATER HISTORY

Writing in 1985, C. E. B. Brett described Nos. 3–13 College Place North as "enchanting little two-storey mid-Georgian houses … real jewels with glazing bars all intact, 3 and 5 with their original fanlights." However, a Georgian date is too early; the terrace was most likely constructed around 1840–50 during the Victorian development of the College Square area and was certainly not in existence at the time of the 1832–33 Ordnance Survey map. In 1993 Patton described Nos. 3–9 as an "obtuse-angled terrace of two-storey red-brick houses with some surviving three-lobe fanlights over four-panel doors in simple doorcases." The original fanlight for No. 5 has since been removed, though the glazing bars noted by Brett have been retained.

The terrace was listed in 1977 on the grounds that it represents a rare surviving example of two-storey early 19th-century housing in the area. In the period immediately following listing, the group fell into disrepair through neglect and vandalism, and by the 1990s over half of the houses lay vacant. James Neill's original Victorian mill, which had stood in the shadow of the terrace — first constructed during the Famine and remodelled in the 1880s by James Neill — was demolished in 1986–87 and replaced with the current structure. In 1992 Neill's Mill requested the delisting of College Place North with the intention to demolish the terrace and incorporate the site into the factory. This request was rejected, and a restoration project was subsequently carried out on Nos. 3–13, returning the original character of the terrace. Patton also notes that College Place North was once closed off at the Killen Street end by a brick wall, and that a now-demolished terrace once stood opposite on the southwest side.