26 Ashley Ave, Belfast, BT9 7BT

26 Ashley Avenue is a two-storey terraced house with attic, built in 1870 as part of a small development by Samuel Clotworthy. The architect is unknown, though Luke Livingston Macassey, a Carrickfergus-born architect and engineer then based at 71 High Street, Belfast, is recorded as having worked on plans for a pair of dwellings somewhere in Ashley Avenue in 1871. It is uncertain whether those plans related to this property or whether the houses in question were ever built.

Ashley Avenue was laid out between 1858 and 1860, its course following the line of one of the long-established strip farms that stretched from what is now the University and Malone Road area to the Bog Meadows, rather than following a farm boundary as most nearby streets did. The avenue was probably named in tribute to Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 8th Earl of Shaftesbury (1831–86), who in 1857 married Lady Harriet Chichester, heiress to the Marquis of Donegall. The earliest property on the street was Ashley House (No. 30, now demolished), advertised in the Belfast News-Letter in August 1860 as a new detached house with front and back parlour, drawing room, five bedrooms, gas and water, and a large garden. Nos. 22–28 were built to its eastern side in 1870–71, turning it into an end-of-terrace property. No. 26 and its former neighbour No. 28 (now demolished) were both completed in 1870. The following year Clotworthy added Nos. 22 and 24 to the east. Of the original terrace of five, Nos. 28 and 30 were demolished at some point between 1959 and 1970.

The earliest recorded occupant of No. 26 was Mrs Margaret Monteith. From around 1879 the property was occupied by Samuel Clotworthy himself, listed in the 1887 street directory as a coal merchant. He appears to have died before 1890, after which a Mrs Clotworthy is listed as householder. The 1901 census records her as a widow, living there with her two grown-up children and a domestic servant in what was then classified as a second-class dwelling with twelve rooms. By the 1911 census it had been reclassified as a first-class dwelling with seven rooms, and only Mrs Clotworthy and her daughter remained. After Mrs Clotworthy's death around 1922 the house passed to Alexander Clotworthy, who appears to have remained there until at least the early 1950s. Later occupants include Edward J. Whinton (a secretary) in 1960, A. J. Crockart (a studio manager) from around 1963 until around 1990, and Judith West, noted as resident in the final Belfast street directory of 1996.

The house faces north onto Ashley Avenue. It stands within the Lisburn Road Area of Townscape Character, one of a series of densely developed streets of similarly scaled terraced and semi-detached properties off Lisburn Road in south Belfast. It has group value with the adjoining Nos. 22 and 24 Ashley Avenue, which together form the surviving portion of the original terrace of five.

EXTERIOR

The rendered and painted façade is asymmetrical. To the left at ground floor is a single-storey canted bay with a parapet roof; to the right is the entrance; and at first floor are two equal-sized windows. The render is finished smooth and painted, with indented lines up to first-floor cill height to resemble rusticated stone, and all dressings are highlighted in a contrasting colour. The bay has a continuous cill, a moulded string course, and head and cornice detailing. The entrance is framed by an aedicule with panelled sides and lintel, decorative scrolled console brackets, a projecting hood with moulded cornice, and a pediment above. The first-floor windows have moulded surrounds, and there is a projecting course between the first-floor cills, a moulded string at attic level, and a projecting eaves course on paired block modillions to the front.

The front door is a timber-framed door, painted, with bolection moulding, raised and fielded panelling, and round-arched upper panels with carved spandrels. The entrance retains its original cast iron knocker, bell-push, and letterbox, as well as its brass handle. There is a plain glass overlight containing historic glass. Some historic glass also survives in the ground-floor bay windows. All front openings are square-headed, and windows throughout are single-glazed, double-hung sliding sashes with two-over-two panes unless otherwise noted.

The roof is natural slate — Bangor Blue — with a mix of red and black clay ridge tiles, including to the rear return. There is a modern skylight to the rear slope. The rendered chimney is centred on the ridge, has a corbelled cap and five octagonal yellow clay pots, and is shared with No. 24. Cast iron ogee guttering runs to the north elevation along with one cast iron rainwater pipe; the remainder of the rainwater goods are uPVC. The rear has a simpler projecting eaves course with uPVC half-round gutter on rise-and-fall brackets.

The rear elevation faces south. It is two bays wide with smooth rendered and painted walls, projecting stone cills, and an eaves course. To the left (west) is a two-storey gabled return abutted by a single-storey flat-roofed extension of around the 1960s, considered to be of little historic interest. The rear return has a south elevation that is blank with clipped eaves. The single-storey extension has glazed sliding doors and a screen, with projecting boxed timber eaves, painted. The main building has a single window above the return to the left side, and to the right side there is a flush painted timber hatch at basement level with one window each at ground and first floor.

The east face of the return has informally arranged openings. At ground floor, from right to left, there is a large timber sliding sash window, single-glazed with ten-over-ten panes, a uPVC door in an original opening, and two further windows. At first floor there are three windows — two equal-sized and one smaller. The east face of the single-storey extension has a timber-framed casement window divided into three lights, with a thin concrete cill extended to the corner.

The west elevation comprises the gable end of the main building and the west face of the return. The gable is rendered smooth. At its north and south ends, small sections of wall have been retained as buttresses where the formerly adjoining No. 28 was demolished and a red brick property erected on the adjacent site. There is a projecting timber bargeboard, painted. The west face of the return is blank except for a single first-floor window offset to the north. No. 24 abuts the east elevation of the main building.

The site slopes north to south so that the rear yard level sits approximately half a storey lower than the front entrance. A two-storey gabled return is built at half-landing level to the rear.

INTERIOR

The plan form is largely unaltered from its original arrangement. The interior retains an array of historic joinery and plasterwork among other features of note.

SETTING

The house is set back from the pavement by a low wall and railings with a gate; both have been replaced but are sympathetic to the character of the building. There is hedging and shrubs behind. Historic maps show that each property in the terrace originally had its own yard, a communal rear passage, and individual gardens beyond; the gates between gardens remain although the passage is no longer present. To the right of the rear return the yard is surfaced in square quarry tiles, possibly original. There is a small patio area of precast concrete paving slabs at the single-storey extension, with lawn and planted borders beyond and a brick boundary wall.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTE

Archaeological remains reputedly associated with an early Christian occupation site (ANT 061:014) were discovered in 1975 during an excavation of the cellar of the neighbouring No. 22 Ashley Avenue. No. 26 is situated in the vicinity of this site.