563 Ormeau Road, Belfast

563 Ormeau Road is a two-storey terraced house with an attic, built in 1886 in the upper Ormeau Road area of Belfast, approximately 4 kilometres from the city centre. It forms part of a terrace of nine properties originally known as Rosetta Terrace, with the southernmost four dwellings (including this house) completed in 1886 and the remaining five finished in 1887. The developer was H. Scott, a pawnbroker, though the architect remains unknown.

The building is rectangular on plan with a two-storey return and a small ground floor extension on the south side. The ground floor is rendered and painted, while the first floor is built in red clay brick laid in Flemish bond with two rows of blue brick set beneath a decorative brick cornice. The roof is covered in natural Bangor Blue slates.

The front elevation features smooth painted render to the ground floor, with the original four-panelled door positioned to the right beneath an ornate bracketed hood. To the left is a canted bay with top-hung windows and a raised plinth. The first floor is separated from the ground floor by a plaster string course and contains two 1/1 windows. A pitched roof dormer with a replacement top-hung window and fixed semi-circular light sits above the wall head, flanked by Velux-type roof-lights. A large clay brick chimney stack is positioned on the left gable. The left-hand corner displays painted alternating quoins.

The south gable elevation is smooth painted render with a brick chimney on the ridge and alternating painted quoins at both corners. It has a raised plinth and features one window to the ground floor left, two windows to the first floor, and a smaller window with semi-circular head in the attic storey, all top-hung uPVC. A small mono-pitched kitchen extension extends from this elevation with two Velux-type roof windows. The return wall is rendered with two top-hung windows to the first floor and one to the ground floor, accessed via a uPVC double door in the extension.

The north elevation abuts No. 565 Ormeau Road. The rear wall is rendered and abuts a recently constructed house on the former rear garden; its only opening is a small top-hung window to the left in the attic storey, with two Velux-type roof-lights on the rear roof slope.

The house demonstrates considerable Victorian architectural detail and proportion throughout. Windows are currently 1/1 top-hung uPVC replacements, which are considered inappropriate insertions. The building retains group value with the other eight listed properties in the terrace, numbered 547 to 563 Ormeau Road.

The original occupant was John Walker, a bookkeeper employed by the distillers Dunville & Company. According to the 1901 census, he lived there with his wife Edith Anne, seven children, his sister Margaret Stewart, her daughter Lizzie, and a domestic servant. Walker died in the early 1900s; by 1911 his widow occupied the house with five of their children. Members of the Walker family continued to reside at No. 563 until the late 1970s. The property was subsequently occupied by various householders through the 1990s, acquired by a housing association around 2000, and converted to a house in multiple occupation by a charitable body shortly afterwards. The building was listed in 1986. The return was extended and a new dwelling constructed adjacent to it around 1998.

A letting advertisement from October 1886 described such properties as 'large houses' with three reception rooms, five bedrooms, hot and cold water, and 'all modern improvements', in a 'warm, healthy situation, with gardens; trams pass door'. An advertisement from July 1887 referred to the later dwellings as 'well finished' with two reception rooms on the ground floor and six bedrooms.