11 McMaster Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT5 4HP

Number 11 McMaster Street is a two-storey-with-attic, single-bay late Victorian terraced house, built around 1896 on the west side of McMaster Street, East Belfast, in the townland of Ballymacarrett. It was developed by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, and forms part of a complete street of 37 late Victorian parlour houses built in several phases between 1899 and 1908. It is one of the listed buildings in McMaster Street and carries group value with its neighbours.

Architectural Description

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles, a central rooflight window on the east slope, and a modern red brick chimney stack at the south side. Painted ogee-profile cast-iron rainwater goods are supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course over an ovolo-moulded corbel course.

The walls are laid in English garden-wall bond — alternating courses of headers and stretchers in red brick — with three polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick-and-sill course at first-floor level, and decorative polychromatic detailing above the first-floor windows. All the polychromatic brickwork is now painted, except for the sections above the first-floor windows. The windows are one-over-one timber sliding sashes, and the door is a replacement timber panelled door. All windows and the door sit within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and projecting masonry sills.

The principal (east) elevation faces McMaster Street. At the right is an entrance door — a replacement timber panelled door with a square-headed transom light — accessed by a tiled threshold. A window sits to the left of the entrance. At first-floor level, two windows are positioned slightly offset to the left. The north gable is abutted by number 9 McMaster Street, and the south gable is abutted by the two-storey number 13 McMaster Street. The rear elevation was not accessible for inspection, but is enclosed by high-level stretcher-bonded modern red brick walling with a painted vertically-sheeted timber entrance door at the centre, reached via a narrow entry running north to south between the back yards of Parker Street and McMaster Street.

Setting

Number 11 sits at the north end of the west terrace — the two-storey-with-attic block — facing onto McMaster Street. The wide street was formerly cobbled and is now largely laid in concrete, with small cobbled areas surviving at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs, original lamp posts and electric lighting (formerly gas lights). Original tiled street signage survives at both the north and south ends of the street. The street narrows towards Major Street at the south.

Historical Background

McMaster Street was built in the closing decades of the 19th century to house workers employed in the rapidly expanding industries of East Belfast, most notably at the Harland and Wolff shipyard on Queen's Island, which employed 9,000 men by 1900. The Ballymacarrett area — which in the mid-19th century had been a landscape of fields, cottages, and mansions around an industrial core — was gradually transformed into rows of terraced housing for the workforce driving Belfast's new prosperity. Other major local industries included ropeworks, linen manufacture, engineering, and fertiliser production.

McMaster Street was built in several phases. The first phase — numbers 2 to 14, two-and-a-half-storey houses — was in place by 1899. The second phase — numbers 1 to 11, also two-and-a-half storeys — appears in the street directory for 1900, alongside references to houses still under construction. By the census of March 1901, numbers 1 to 35 were complete (number 37 does not appear in the census but is listed in the 1901 street directory), and the remaining houses, numbers 16 to 52, were added by 1908. The designers, John Frazer and Son, were active between the 1890s and 1910s and were responsible for several similar terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place.

The houses on the western side of the street first enter valuation records in 1900. They are of the parlour type and were built to a high specification, incorporating running water and flush toilets — then still emerging technologies in workers' housing. Building controls required each house to have a rear entrance and a back yard with a toilet. Gas was piped in for lighting, though electricity did not become commonplace until the 1930s; lamp-lighters and window-tappers were daily visitors to the street. Male residents were typically employed in shipbuilding; women worked in the linen or rope industries. The larger families tended to occupy the attic-storey houses at the north end of the street.

Number 11 was originally leased by Mary Walker from the developer John McMaster. In 1900 it was recorded as four years old, though it was more likely no more than two years old at that time. Numbers 1 to 11 — all houses and yards of two storeys plus an attic, with a single-storey return — were valued at £10 10s, later reduced, possibly on appeal, to £9 10s. The house contained four bedrooms and a sitting room, was fitted with gas, and carried a monthly rent of £1 8s 4d (£17 per year, minus taxes). The estimated cost of construction was £105.

By the 1901 census, the tenant was Garrett Kavanagh, a Catholic riveter born in England, living with his wife, five children, and a boarder. The two older daughters were weavers, a third daughter was a braider, and the female boarder worked as a drawer — a hauler of heavy loads — in a factory. A succession of tenants followed: William Brown of the Royal Irish Constabulary (1905), James White, joiner (1906), Samuel Smyth, boilermaker (1908), James Bell, music teacher (1909), and William Hewitt, labourer (1910). By the 1911 census, William Hewitt — recorded as aged 71 and described as a fitter's labourer — was living with his wife and three children (one of whom was blind), a son-in-law, three grandchildren, and a niece. The eldest son was also a fitter's labourer; the unmarried daughter was a collar and cuff stitcher; the son-in-law was a brassfounder; and the niece, born in Barrow-in-Furness, was a cotton winder. Subsequent tenants included James Cleland, riveter (1913), and Mrs S. Noble (1915).

The Noble family was forced to leave the house during the Belfast Blitz. There were four air raids on Belfast in April and May 1941, during which over half the city's housing stock was damaged. Although McMaster Street itself was not destroyed, the area was targeted in raids on 7–8 April and 4–5 May 1941. The 1942 street directory records that most houses in the street had been vacated — including number 3, probably as a result of fire damage — but by 1943 the majority of residents, including the Noble family, had returned. In 1948 the householder is listed as Ronald Noble, followed by Randal Noble, an iron turner, in 1951. They were succeeded in 1953 by Mrs Mary Robinson, who had become a Justice of the Peace by 1965.

McMaster Street is the only late Victorian terrace in Belfast to have survived in reasonably original condition. The street was listed in 1987 and designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment in 1994. Redevelopment in the 1970s led to the demolition of many neighbouring terraces, making McMaster Street's survival all the more significant. Two of the houses in the street have been restored by the Hearth building preservation trust. Number 11 has survived both the German Blitz of 1941 and the widespread demolitions of the 1970s, and it retains much of its original character, including the polychromatic brick string courses and camber-headed window openings. Built close to the Harland and Wolff shipyards, and constructed under new housing and planning regulations designed to improve living standards for working-class people in Belfast at the turn of the 20th century, it represents an important link with the city's industrial and social history.