28 Florenceville Drive

28 Florenceville Drive is a two-storey mid-terrace red-brick house built by Belfast Corporation in 1923, situated on the north-facing side of Florenceville Drive, a quiet residential street off Ormeau Road approximately 3 kilometres from Belfast city centre. It is notable as the only house in its designed terrace of 13 properties to retain its original external detailing and internal features, particularly its original sliding sash windows, making it a rare survivor of inter-war local authority housing in South Belfast.

The house is constructed of red clay brick laid in stretcher bond beneath a double pitched roof covered in natural Bangor Blue slate with exposed rafter ends on the front and rear elevations. A red brick chimney on the left side of the front elevation has plain corbel courses at the top.

The front elevation faces almost due north and features a replacement painted door on the right, styled in the manner of the original early twentieth-century door with three raised panels and a shaped light above containing patterned glass. The door is protected by a projecting painted concrete hood supported on brackets. To the left of the door are two identical 4/4 single-glazed painted timber sliding sash windows with horns, set in segmental headed openings with painted cills. Two identical windows of the same type are positioned directly above on the first floor.

The rear elevation faces south and contains a painted vertical boarded door with an original small 1/1 painted timber sliding sash window to the left. To the right is a replacement uPVC window set in an enlarged opening with a thin painted concrete sill. The first floor of the rear elevation has two 4/4 windows matching those on the front. Windows throughout are 4/4 single-glazed painted timber sliding sash with horns, except for a single rear window. The rainwater goods are uPVC.

The small rectangular rear yard is finished with concrete paving slabs and gravel, bounded by painted vertical timber boarding, with a gate providing access to a narrow lane that opens further down Florenceville Drive. Opposite the rear yard, across the lane, are the rear yards of two-storey houses in Whitehall Parade. The small front garden is bounded by privet hedging and finished with a replacement tiled path to the front door and concrete paving slabs.

Despite modest size and some replacement interior fittings, the house has been sympathetically restored internally, retaining significant original features that distinguish it from neighbouring properties in the terrace.

Florenceville Drive was laid out following the construction of Ballynafeigh Methodist Church in 1897-98. Apart from two dwellings at the north-eastern end (numbers 1-3, built circa 1903) and a school house to the rear of the church, the street remained largely undeveloped until 1923, when Belfast Corporation constructed the rows of two-storey dwellings numbered 15-35 and 18-34. A slightly larger row of bay-windowed houses at the eastern end of the north side was built by a private developer in 1928, followed by a further group of Corporation dwellings on the south side (numbers 10-16) in the mid-1930s.

No. 28 was occupied by Miss S. Gillespie in 1932. W.J. Deans, a male nurse, was listed as resident from 1943 until the later 1970s. He was succeeded by Andrew McConnell (listed as a slater), followed by Kieran Heaney by 1986, and William Deans (the former occupant or a relative) by 1991. Mr Deans was still living there in 1996.