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

Number 3 McMaster Street is a two-storey-with-attic, single-bay terraced house, built around 1896 on the west side of McMaster Street in Ballymacarrett, East Belfast. It was developed by John McMaster and designed by J. Frazer and Son (also recorded as John Fraser and Son), a practice active between the 1890s and 1910s who were responsible for several similar terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place.

The house is one of 37 parlour-type houses forming a terrace built in several phases between 1899 and 1908. McMaster Street is the only late Victorian terrace in Belfast to have survived in reasonably original condition, and it holds significant historical value as housing built for workers employed in the nearby Harland and Wolff shipyards, as well as in ropeworks, linen manufacturing, engineering and fertiliser businesses concentrated in the Ballymacarrett area. The street was built to new housing and planning regulations introduced to raise living standards for the working class at the turn of the twentieth century. Houses were required to have a rear entrance, a back yard and a flush toilet, and were fitted with running water and piped gas lighting — all considered advanced provisions for workers' housing at the time.

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles. A rooflight window sits on the east slope. There is a modern 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 English garden-wall bond red brick, laid with alternating courses of headers and stretchers, with three polychromatic brick string courses including a continuous brick and sill course at first-floor level, and decorative detailing above the first-floor windows. All polychromatic brickwork is now painted except for the section above the first-floor windows. The window and door openings are set within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, with projecting masonry sills. The windows are replacement uPVC casements and the door is a replacement uPVC panelled door with glazing. The principal east-facing elevation has the entrance door to the right, comprising a replacement uPVC door with a square-headed transom light, accessed by a paved and ceramic-tiled threshold. A window sits to the left of the door at ground floor, and two windows at first-floor level are offset slightly to the left.

The north gable abuts No. 1 McMaster Street, and the south gable abuts No. 5 McMaster Street. The rear elevation is abutted at the left by a single-storey lean-to extension (attached from the north boundary wall). The rear elevation was not fully visible at the time of survey, access having been made only from the east entry. 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 north-south entry running between the back yards of Parker Street and McMaster Street.

The house sits at the north end of the west terrace. McMaster Street is wide — formerly cobbled, now largely concrete with small cobbled areas remaining at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs and original lamp posts and electric lighting, which were formerly gas lights. Original tiled street signage survives at the north and south ends of the street. The street narrows towards Major Street at the south.

The first recorded occupant was William Moore, a fancy bread baker, who leased the house from the developer John McMaster. Valuation records from 1900 describe the house as four years old, though it is unlikely to have been more than two years old at that point. Numbers 1 to 11 — all two-storey-with-attic houses with a single-storey return — were valued at £10 10s, later reduced to £9 10s, possibly on appeal. These northern houses with the attic storey are slightly larger than numbers 13 to 37, which received lower valuations. The house at No. 3 contained four bedrooms and a sitting room, was fitted with gas, and carried a rent of £1 8s 4d monthly, or £17 per year minus taxes. The estimated construction cost was £105.

The 1901 census records William Moore living at the house with his wife, two daughters, and three sons. His older daughter was a machinist and his older son a shipwright. By 1911 two further children had found employment — one as a brass finisher in the shipyard and another as a patent turner in a linen factory, while the older daughter had left, presumably having married. The Moore family continued to occupy the house across several generations: Samuel Moore, a fitter, was resident in 1936, followed by Miss E. Moore in 1937, and Thomas Moore, a machineman, in 1939. Thomas Moore was forced to leave during the Belfast Blitz of 1941. Belfast suffered four air raids in April and May 1941, during which over half the city's housing stock was damaged. McMaster Street was not destroyed, but raids on 7/8 April and 4/5 May targeted the area, and the 1942 street directory records that most houses in the street, including No. 3, had been vacated, probably due to fire damage. By 1943 most residents had returned, including Thomas Moore. Later occupants included William Moore, a clerk (from 1958), and Thomas McCullough, a joiner (from 1972).

The building survived both the 1941 Blitz and the widespread demolition that accompanied redevelopment in the 1970s, which removed many of the other terraces in the area. McMaster Street was listed in 1987 and the surrounding area was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment in 1994. Two houses in the street have since been restored by the Hearth building preservation trust. Number 3 has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street and is of local historical interest.