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

26 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced house built circa 1898 by developer John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son. It stands on the east side of McMaster Street in the Ballymacarrett area of East Belfast, close to the former Harland and Wolff shipyards. It forms part of a complete street of late Victorian terraced housing and shares group value with the other listed buildings on McMaster Street.

EXTERIOR

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and a 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 two polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick-and-sill course at first-floor level. The windows are replacement 1-over-1 square-headed horizontally divided timber sliding sashes, and the door is a replacement timber panelled door with a square-headed transom light. Windows and door are all set within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and have projecting masonry sills.

The principal (west) elevation has the entrance door at the left, accessed via a concrete threshold, flanked by a window to the right. Two windows at first-floor level are offset slightly to the right. The north gable abuts No. 24 McMaster Street, and the south gable abuts No. 28 McMaster Street. The rear (east) elevation was not accessible at the time of survey. Access to the enclosed rear yard is from the entry via a timber-sheeted entrance door to the east, contained within high-level brick walling on all sides.

SETTING

The house sits at the north end of the east terrace two-storey block, facing onto McMaster Street. The wide street, formerly cobbled, is now largely concrete with small cobbled areas at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs, original lamp posts with electric lighting (converted from former gas lights), and original tiled street signage at both north and south ends of the street. The rear elevation 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.

HISTORY

No. 26 McMaster Street first appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map for Belfast of 1920–21, by which time both terraces of the street had been completed. Belfast Street Directories show that while the western terrace (Nos 1–37) and Nos 6–14 on the eastern side were built in 1898 and 1899, the remainder of the eastern terrace — including No. 26, which falls within Nos 16–52 — was not completed until 1908, a full decade after construction of the street began. The land owned by John McMaster was wedge-shaped, meaning the terraces became progressively narrower and the gardens smaller as building progressed towards the far end of the street.

The Annual Revisions record that the first occupant of No. 26 was a Mrs Stroud, who came into possession of the house in the year the terrace was completed, 1908. At that time the house was valued at £8 and was let by John McMaster, who had originally owned the land on the south side of the Newtownards Road on which the street was built. By 1910 a Joseph Stroud was recorded in the Belfast Street Directories as employed at the nearby shipyards as a fitter. By the 1911 Census, however, the house had passed to Joseph Calvert, also employed at the yards as a shipsmith. The 1911 Census Building Return described No. 26 as a second-class dwelling consisting of seven rooms. Calvert continued to reside at the address until at least 1918, after which the house was vacated by 1930, when William Elliot — employed at the shipyards as a boilermaker — took possession.

By the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930 the house's valuation remained at £8, but by the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 it had risen to £11. McMaster Street escaped damage during the 1941 Belfast Blitz, when Luftwaffe raids on the shipyards caused widespread destruction to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road. Following the war, the Second General Revaluation recorded that ownership of the street had passed from John McMaster to an L. McMaster (relationship unknown), and the value of No. 26 increased to £12, remaining at that rate through to the end of the revaluation period in 1972. William Elliot continued to live at No. 26 until the 1980s and worked at the shipyards as a boilermaker until at least the 1970s.

The street's architect, John Frazer and Sons, was active from the 1890s through to the second decade of the 20th century and also designed other terraced streets in Belfast including Chadwick Street (built 1899) and Meadowbank Place, both of which are similar in design to McMaster Street. The parlour houses on McMaster Street were designed and constructed in accordance with new housing and planning regulations intended to improve living standards for working-class people in Belfast. As a result, the terraces were among the first late Victorian industrial houses in Belfast to be supplied with running water and flushable toilets, made possible by the construction of a new city drainage system. Gas piping was also introduced into each house to provide lighting — a new practice at the time that, together with the improved sanitary facilities, distinguished McMaster Street from the more squalid housing typical of early Victorian Belfast. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s.

During the 1970s, the Ballymacarrett area underwent extensive redevelopment, with the demolition of many red-brick terraces similar in character to McMaster Street. The survival of the street as an intact remnant of late Victorian working-class housing was consequently considered significant, and in 1987 No. 26 was listed 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 any additions to the terrace would be in keeping with the original design and fabric of the street.