24 Ashley Ave, Belfast, BT9 7BT

24 Ashley Avenue is a two-storey terraced house with an attic, built around 1871, possibly to designs by the Carrickfergus-born architect and engineer Luke Livingstone Macassey, then practising from 71 High Street, Belfast, though this attribution cannot be confirmed with certainty. It stands on the north side of Ashley Avenue, one of a series of densely populated streets of similarly scaled terraced and semi-detached properties off Lisburn Road in south Belfast, and sits within the Lisburn Road Area of Townscape Character.

The house has group value with its immediate neighbours, numbers 22 and 26 Ashley Avenue, which together form three of an original five properties — numbers 28 and 30 were demolished sometime between 1959 and 1970. The three surviving houses are rendered in different colours but share stucco detailing and are regarded as good examples of late Victorian architecture within the area.

The site slopes north to south, so that the rear yard level sits approximately half a storey lower than the front entrance. The roof is natural slate (Bangor Blue) with black clay ridge tiles, including over the rear return. To the front slope are two gabled dormers with glazed cheeks and uPVC side-hung casement windows, and two modern skylights to the rear slope. There are three rendered chimneys: two centred on the ridge of the main roof with corbelled caps — one shared with number 22 carrying six octagonal yellow clay pots, the other shared with number 26 carrying five — and a third, more modest chimney to the rear return with render repairs and modern flues. The front eaves feature a projecting course on paired block modillions; the rear eaves have a simpler projecting course with uPVC half-round guttering on rise-and-fall brackets. Rainwater goods throughout are uPVC. Walls are rendered with stone dressings, all painted.

The front elevation facing north is asymmetrical. To the left is a single-storey canted bay window with a parapet roof. To the right at ground floor are two entrances side by side, and at first floor are three equal-sized windows. All openings are square-headed. The rendered walls are painted, with lines indented up to first-floor cill height to imitate rusticated stone, and the dressings are highlighted in a contrasting colour. These dressings include a continuous cill, moulded string course, and head and cornice to the bay; entrance aedicules; moulded first-floor window surrounds and cill course; and projecting eaves. A moulded string course at attic level is painted to match the main walling.

The main entrance door is timber-framed with multi-paned glazing above its mid-rail and bolection moulding to raised and fielded panels below, with a brass letterbox that is likely original, and a multi-paned overlight above. Adjoining it is the entrance to a shared access passage, with a rippled glass overlight and a timber-framed four-panelled door. Both doors are framed by an aedicule of panelled sides and lintel with decorative scrolled console brackets, and a continuous projecting hood with moulded cornice runs across both doors, with twin pediments above. This additional bay, which is slightly wider than at the neighbouring properties, accommodates both the shared passage running front to back and an additional first-floor window.

Windows to the front (north) elevation are single-glazed double-hung sliding sash with two-over-two panes. Windows to the south, east, and west elevations are uPVC top-hung casements fitted within the original openings. The replacement rear windows detract from the building's authenticity to some degree, though the original openings remain.

The rear elevation (south) is three bays wide. The left bay, above the access passage, has a single window at first floor. The centre has a two-storey gabled return abutted by a single-storey extension. To the right is a flush painted timber hatch at basement level, and one window each at ground and first floor. The main building has a single window above the return at half-landing level to the attic. Walls are smooth rendered and painted, with projecting stone cills and an eaves course. The south elevation of the return is blank with clipped eaves, and its ground floor is abutted by a lean-to glazed conservatory of little historic interest, behind which a modern timber door and uPVC casement window remain within the rear wall of the return.

The east elevation of the main building is abutted by number 22. The east face of the return has informally arranged openings: at ground floor a uPVC door flanked by large uPVC casement windows; at first floor three windows, two equal-sized and one smaller. The west elevation of the main building is abutted by number 26. The west face of the return is largely blank, with a single window at first floor offset to the left and a single window at ground floor with no cill.

The house is set back from the pavement behind a rendered boundary wall, painted with a precast concrete coping, and a front garden surfaced in precast concrete paving slabs. Historic maps show the terrace was originally built with a rear yard for each property, a communal passage, and individual gardens beyond. The passage is now gone. To the right of the return, the yard is surfaced in square quarry tiles that are probably original, with a lawn and planted borders beyond and a rendered boundary wall. Some gates between gardens remain; the one to number 22 appears to be cast iron and was, according to the previous owner of that property, salvaged from a horse paddock around 1980.

Internally, the plan form is largely unaltered and a wealth of historic features survives intact.

Ashley Avenue itself was laid out sometime between 1858 and 1860, its course falling unusually within one of the long-established strip farms that stretched from what is now University Road and Malone Road to the Bog Meadows, rather than following a farm boundary as most streets in the area do. The earliest property built along it appears to have been a detached house referred to in a Belfast News-Letter notice of August 1860 as a "new detached house, now being finished in Ashley Avenue" with front and back parlour, drawing room, five bedrooms, gas, water, and a large garden. This was Ashley House, number 30 (now demolished), which was originally freestanding but became an end-of-terrace property when numbers 22 to 28 were built on its eastern side in 1870–71. Other properties followed at intervals: Alexandra Terrace (numbers 41–47) was added at a right angle to the northern side of the street in 1863, number 49 (now demolished) in 1864, numbers 4–14 (several since demolished) and number 57 in 1868, numbers 53–55 in 1871, numbers 33–39 in 1873, numbers 15–27 in 1890, numbers 3–11 in 1892, number 16 in 1893, and number 13 in 1894. Much of the street to the west consists of houses dating from around the 1920s and 1930s, with a long terrace of roughly similar date at the far western end, and Fane Street School, a complex designed by R.S. Wilshire in 1927. In more recent years there has been significant redevelopment within the longer-established eastern section of the street. The street 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.

Number 24 and its similar but non-identical neighbour number 22 were both built in 1871. The developer was Samuel Clotworthy, who had plans for "two houses in Ashley Avenue" approved by Belfast Corporation's Town Improvement Committee in June 1870. The earliest known occupant was Edward Robinson, followed by W.F. Boyd (described as "clerk of union") around 1873–79, Mrs Ross around 1882–93, William M. Johnston ("commercial traveller") around 1893–95, and James Ripley ("clerk") around 1895–99. Charles Kerr Gibson, another commercial traveller who moved in around 1900, is recorded in the 1901 census as living there with his wife Nessie, a baby daughter, and a domestic servant. By the 1911 census the Gibsons' household had grown to five children and two domestic servants, and the property was recorded as a "first class" dwelling with seven rooms occupied. The family vacated number 24 around 1920 and the building was noted as vacant in 1924. By 1932 Misses E and I Fellows were in residence, remaining until at least 1951. Miss Edith M. Atkinson was occupant from before 1960 to the later 1970s, followed by J.A. Martin from around 1978 until at least 1996.

The property is also of archaeological significance. During an excavation of the cellar of number 22 in 1975, remains reputedly associated with an early Christian occupation site (recorded as ANT 061:014) were discovered, and number 24 lies in the vicinity of that site.