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

No. 38 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced house built around 1896–1898 on the east side of McMaster Street, East Belfast, in the Ballymacarrett townland. It was built by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, and forms part of a complete surviving street of late Victorian terraced housing. The house has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street and is of local interest.

EXTERIOR

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles. A red brick chimney stack sits at the south side. Painted ogee-profile cast-iron rainwater goods are supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course, which itself rests on an ovolo-moulded corbel course.

The walls are laid in English garden-wall bond — red brick with alternating courses of headers and stretchers — and feature two polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick-and-sill course at first-floor level. Window openings are camber-headed with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs and projecting masonry sills. The windows themselves are replacement square-headed 1-over-1 timber sliding sashes. The door is a replacement timber panelled door with a square-headed transom light above.

The principal west-facing elevation has the entrance door at the left, accessed via a concrete threshold, with a window to its right. Two windows sit at first-floor level, offset slightly to the right. To the north, the gable abuts No. 36 McMaster Street. A two-storey extension with a pitched roof appears to abut the house at the rear. The rear south elevation was not fully accessible at the time of survey. To the south, the gable abuts No. 40 McMaster Street. Access to the enclosed rear yard is via a timber-sheeted entrance door at the east, set within high-level brick walling on all sides, reached from the entry.

SETTING

No. 38 sits in the middle of the east terrace two-storey block, facing onto McMaster Street. The wide street was formerly cobbled and is now largely concrete, with a small cobbled area 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 the north and south ends of the street. The rear of the property is enclosed by high-level stretcher-bonded modern red brick walling, with a painted vertically-sheeted timber entrance door at the centre, accessed via a narrow entry running north to south between the back yards of Lendrick Street and McMaster Street. The street narrows towards Major Street to the south.

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

McMaster Street was designed by J. Frazer and Son — an architect active from the 1890s through to the second decade of the 20th century, who also designed similar terraced streets in Belfast including Chadwick Street (built 1899) and Meadowbank Place. The land was originally owned by John McMaster, who held the wedge-shaped plot on the south side of the Newtownards Road on which the street was built. Because the land was wedge-shaped, the terraces progressively narrowed and the rear gardens became smaller towards the far end of the street; No. 40 McMaster Street consequently has a considerably smaller yard than those at the top of the terrace.

The western terrace (nos. 1–37) and nos. 6–14 on the eastern side were constructed in 1898 and 1899. The remainder of the eastern terrace, including No. 38 (nos. 16–52), was not completed until 1908, as confirmed by the Belfast Street Directories and the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1920–21. The house was valued at £8 in 1908 and was let by John McMaster. By the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 its value had risen to £11, and by the Second General Revaluation (covering 1956–1972) it had reached £12.

The first recorded occupant of No. 38 was a Mr. Ben Roseman, who came into possession of the house in the year the terrace was completed, though the 1908 Belfast Street Directory records a Mr. Francis Smart, a labourer, as residing there at that time. Ben Roseman is confirmed as occupant in the 1910 Belfast Street Directory. The 1911 Census records Roseman as a Presbyterian house painter living at No. 38 with his wife; the Census Building Return of that year describes the house as a second-class dwelling with seven rooms. Ben Roseman died in 1935 at the age of 55, and thereafter his widow Mrs. Florence Roseman was recorded as occupant. Florence Roseman continued to occupy No. 38 until 1950, by which time ownership of the street had passed from John McMaster to an L. McMaster (relationship unknown). By 1960 a Mr. Andrew Hogg had come into possession of the property.

The parlour houses on McMaster Street were constructed to new housing and planning regulations specifically designed to improve living standards in Belfast. They were among the first late Victorian industrial terraced houses in the city to be supplied with running water and flushable toilets, made possible by the construction of a new city drainage system. Gas piping for lighting was also installed from the outset — practices that set McMaster Street apart from the more squalid early Victorian housing common elsewhere in Belfast at the time. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s.

McMaster Street survived the 1941 Belfast Blitz, in which the Luftwaffe raided the nearby Harland and Wolff shipyards, causing extensive destruction to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road. During the 1970s the Ballymacarrett area was extensively redeveloped and many comparable red brick terraces were demolished; McMaster Street survived as an intact remnant of late Victorian working-class housing. No. 38 was listed in 1987 along with the rest of the terrace. In 1994 the neighbourhood was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment, with criteria established to ensure that additions to the terrace remain in keeping with the original design and fabric of the street. A sympathetic two-storey red brick return was added to the rear of the house around 2000. The street's close proximity to the Harland and Wolff shipyards also provides a direct link to Belfast's industrial heritage.