25 College Gardens, Belfast

25 College Gardens is a mid-terrace, three-storey over basement red brick late Victorian townhouse, built in 1882 by an unknown architect. It now serves as office accommodation and forms part of a symmetrical block of four townhouses — numbers 23, 24, 25 and 26 — in which number 24 is mirrored by number 25, with the wider, gabled-end properties at numbers 23 and 26 flanking them. The building sits within the Queens Conservation Area on a tree-lined street running east to west between Malone Road and Lisburn Road, with the houses facing south over the grounds of Methodist College.

The roof is natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. A large red brick chimney, partially replaced, rises centrally from the ridge with a simple corbelled brick cap and eight circular red clay pots, shared with number 26. Two modern roof lights sit on the front pitch and one on the rear. Projecting moulded stucco eaves with fluted corbel brackets on a plain frieze band run across the front elevation.

The walls are red brick in Flemish bond with painted moulded stucco dressings to the front (south) elevation, and red brick in English Garden Wall bond to the rear (north) elevation and return. Rainwater goods to the south elevation are cast iron with an ogee-profile gutter and square-section aluminium downpipe; the north elevation and return have cast iron half-round gutters and circular-section downpipes, with some uPVC replacements. Windows are generally single-glazed double-hung sliding sashes with 1/1 panes to the front and 2/2 panes to the rear and return, except where otherwise noted.

The front (south) elevation is Italianate in style with classical proportions. It is asymmetrical, with an aedicule at the entrance to the right and a single-storey square bay with three windows and an openwork parapet to the left. The entire ground floor is in painted stucco, with red brick above and moulded stucco dressings including continuous projecting cills at first and second floor levels. Three windows on each of the upper floors diminish in height as they rise, all with segmental arches and roll-edge mouldings. The first-floor windows have plain stucco surrounds with projecting hoods — pedimented to the middle window and shallow-pitched to the side windows — while the second-floor windows have moulded stucco surrounds with corresponding brackets below the cill course. The square bay has a projecting base plinth with a moulded top, cill, head and cornice with a plain frieze, and stop-chamfered detail to the outer corners.

The entrance is framed by a timber four-panelled door with a plain fanlight, bolection moulding to fielded and pitched panels, flanked by Corinthian-style pilasters, and topped by a deep moulded pediment with a foliated tympanum bearing the date '1882'.

The rear (north) elevation overlooks Elmwood Mews and is plainly detailed by comparison. It is asymmetrical, with a full-height projection abutted by a double return comprising a three-storey hipped-roofed part and a two-storey flat-roofed part, all offset to the left and built over the basement, with a single window at each floor to the right side (1/1 pane at ground floor). The red brick walling has soldier courses above flat-arched windows, alternating angled headers at the projecting eaves, and simple stone cills. The chimney at the hipped roof return is slated over, with a single window at second-floor level centred on the ridge and otherwise blank walls. The flat-roofed return is informally arranged, with a margin-paned window offset to the left and a diminutive metal-framed fixed light to the right at first floor, two uPVC casement windows at ground floor, and two blocked-up segmental arched openings at basement level. Sandstone steps, repaired in part with concrete, sit to the right of these blocked openings, with a curved brick reveal to a segmental arched recessed opening.

The east elevation is abutted by number 24, including its return. The west elevation of the main building is abutted by number 26. The west elevation of the full-height rear projection has a single opening at each level, with margin panes at first and second floors, while the ground-floor opening has been bricked up. The west elevation of the return has two windows at both ground and first floors within the hipped-roofed section; the flat-roofed section has a sliding sash window with 6/6 panes and historic glass at ground floor, a single window at second floor, and is otherwise blank.

The building is set back from the tree-lined street by a tarmacked car park. The entrance is framed by a rendered dwarf wall, curved on plan, terminating in circular pillars with conical caps. Mature hedging aligns the boundary with the front gardens of numbers 24 and 26.

At the rear, the yard is arranged on two levels. The lower yard is surfaced in square paving flags, with further steps within the return leading to a recessed back door. A red brick wall in English Garden Wall bond with a canted brick cap and simple metal railings over divides the yard from number 24; the same wall with a rounded terracotta cap marks the southern boundary, where a sheeted timber ledged and braced door leads on to Elmwood Mews via a short flight of steps. A lean-to outbuilding occupies the reverse side of this boundary wall. To the right of the yard, a flat-roofed garage with red brick walls, a PVC roof membrane, and a painted metal up-and-over door opening onto the alley adjoins a substantial rear extension to number 26.

The plan form has been slightly altered for office use, but a good deal of original joinery and authentic historic detailing remains intact, including the original staircase.

College Gardens takes its name from Methodist College, completed in 1868, whose grounds the street overlooks. The land on which it stands was, before the early 19th century, part of a series of strip farms running between what are now Malone Road and University Road and the Bog Meadows — an arrangement probably established in the early 17th century. The cutting of the Lisburn Road between 1816 and 1819, followed by the construction of the Ulster Railway between 1837 and 1839, broke up the old field pattern. Around the same period, greater security of tenure from the Donegall estate prompted the gentrification of what remained, with small country villas being built or upgraded and modest demesnes laid out within the former farm plots.

The land immediately north and south of College Gardens had belonged to one such villa, 'Vermont', a house predating 1770 that was possibly rebuilt or enlarged around 1815 and again in the 1840s — on the latter occasion by John Riddell, a Belfast ironmonger. The construction of Queen's College a short distance to the north-east in 1845 triggered the suburbanisation of the surrounding area. In 1865, Vermont itself was sold for the building of Methodist College, and on completion of that institution in 1868 a new private avenue was laid out on the lower ground immediately to the north, with building plots on its northern side. Construction proceeded from the eastern end: numbers 1–6 were built in 1871, numbers 7–18 in 1877, numbers 33 and 34 in 1879, numbers 19–22 in 1881, numbers 23–26 (including the present building) in 1882, and numbers 27–32 in 1883. The developer of everything from number 11 to number 32 appears to have been the Reverend George Cron, at the time minister of the Evangelical Union Church in Wellington Place, though the architect for number 25 remains unidentified.

The first street directory in which number 25 appears, dated 1887, records the occupant as Jasper Grant, a linen merchant. He was followed around 1889 by William J. Pratten, a marine engineer, who vacated the property around 1900, after which it lay empty for several years. John Dowling, described in records as a plumber and gasfitter, was in residence by 1907, and the 1911 census records him at number 25 with his wife Fanny, their daughter and son-in-law, and a domestic servant. The census notes the building as a first-class dwelling with nine rooms in use. By 1918 the Dowlings were still in residence, but by at least 1924 the property had passed to a medical doctor, Thomas Houston — later Sir Thomas Houston. Another doctor, J. T. Lewis, had taken on the property by 1932, followed by Robert J. Frizzell, an organising secretary, by 1943. Dr Lewis returned to number 25 by 1951 and remained there until at least 1964.

It should be noted that the background section of the original listing record contains some internal inconsistencies in the sequence of occupants, where references to the Martins, James H. Stirling, Mrs Stirling, and Baptist Gamble appear without a fully coherent chronological ordering as presented in that source; the details above follow the source text as provided.

By 1969, the property had come into the possession of Queen's University and was used as staff flats. Around 1987 it was converted to office use, serving for a period as the offices of the Belfast Festival at Queen's, and later as the Queen's University Belfast Midwifery Department.