29 Malone Place, Belfast, County Antrim, BT12 5FD

29 Malone Place is a two-storey, two-bay Victorian end-of-terrace dwelling built around 1860, forming part of the latter half of a terrace located off the Lisburn Road, adjacent to Sandy Row, approximately one mile south of Belfast city centre. It is of square plan with a two-storey rear return.

The roof is pitched with natural slate and clay ridge tiles, replacement galvanised steel rainwater goods, a red-brick chimney with clay pots, and a rooflight to the rear pitch. The walls are of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with a projected smooth rendered plinth course, yellow-brick eaves courses, and vermiculated quoins. The windows are 1/1 double-glazed timber sliding-sash with horns, painted masonry cills, and yellow-brick flat arches. The entrance has a replacement timber door with an overlight, flanked by panelled pilasters rising to a pair of foliated consoles supporting a moulded canopy, with a terrazzo step.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged, with a door to the left and a single window to the right at ground floor level, two windows at first floor, and quoins to the left. The left gable is also asymmetrically arranged, finished in ruled-and-lined render with quoins to the right, and narrow windows at both ground and first floor levels positioned right of centre. The rear elevation is asymmetrically arranged, with single windows at ground and first floor to the right; the left bay is abutted by a replacement red-brick two-storey return with lower eaves and ridge levels. The right gable adjoins number 27 Malone Place.

The exterior has retained its essential original proportions and character, though some historic features have been lost. Internally, some alterations to the detailing have resulted in the loss of some original fabric. Nevertheless, the overall intact external appearance of the terrace means the house is a good surviving example of housing of this type, adding significant value to the group as a whole and making a positive architectural contribution to the character of the area.

The terrace faces directly onto a narrow street. Opposite is a rubble masonry wall bounding the railway embankment, and a small park enclosed by gated railings. On the opposing side of the Lisburn Road stands the University Road Moravian Church. The former Maternity Hospital lies to the west, with a large modern apartment block to the north.

The terrace was built in at least two phases. The earlier part dates from the late 1840s, with further houses added in the early 1860s. The site, at the bottom of Sandy Row, lay well outside the urban area of Belfast until the 1850s; Sandy Row itself probably follows a route established in medieval times. On the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–3, a small structure is shown on the site, possibly associated with the Malone turnpike which was situated at this junction. The area was otherwise little developed at that time, consisting mostly of housing along the major routes into Belfast. Industrial activity gradually spread westwards, and by the time the terrace was built the surrounding landscape was a mixture of factories, brickfields, housing, larger mansions, and open ground. The most prominent local structure was the Union Workhouse and Fever Hospital, dating from 1841 and 1849, and several residents of Malone Place were employed there at various times.

Annotations by Brett of the 1850 Hodges and Smith map — on which the terrace makes its first appearance — indicate that the site had belonged from 1798 to a gentleman named William Irvine. In 1826 it was purchased, together with the neighbouring plot, by Arthur Gaffikin, a butcher and property developer who later became the proprietor of a linen business. Gaffikin is commemorated in the name of Gaffikin Street, which runs to the rear of Malone Place. The terrace does not appear in the street directory of 1846–7 but is listed in the 1850 edition, suggesting a construction date in the late 1840s for numbers 9 to 19. The terrace was built to the rear of a larger house called Malone Cottage, which faces onto Sandy Row (then known as Malone Road). It is possible that Malone Cottage and the terrace were developed together by Arthur Gaffikin and then sold on, or that he sold the land as individual building plots. In Griffith's Valuation of 1860, Sarah Warnock is listed as landlady; the houses are valued at £10 and dimensions are recorded. The dwellings were advertised in the Belfast Newsletter in March 1857 as follows: "To let, neat, well-finished houses in Malone Place, adjoining the Post Office, containing Parlour, Kitchen, Three Bedrooms with Gas and Water at the greatly reduced rent of £11."

Numbers 21 to 29, including the present house, were built between 1860 and 1863 by property developer Moses Tate. They were valued slightly higher than the earlier houses — at £11, with number 29 valued at £12 — though both valuations were later reduced in 1888 to £10 and £11 respectively. The Belfast Newsletter of February 1862 noted that "a number of respectable houses have lately been built on the above Ground and others are in progress of erection." Further building land in the area was subsequently offered by Arthur Gaffikin, and four slightly larger houses were built on the far side of Blondin Street between 1870 and 1877. These were later taken over as the Midnight Mission Rescue Home, a refuge for women described at the time as "fallen," eventually accommodating unmarried mothers and functioning as a maternity hospital. The four dwellings were demolished in 1924 and a new Rescue and Maternity Home was built on the site to designs by William Godfrey Ferguson. In 1973, Malone Place Hospital was absorbed by the Jubilee Maternity Hospital; it ceased to be used for maternity services after 1981, though it has remained the property of the Health Trust.

The first valuation map to show the terrace, dating from around 1860, depicts ornamental railings and a step to the front of each of the original six houses, with a rear return and outbuildings in the yard behind each. A subsequent edition from around 1860–1895 records a boundary post and watering trough at the junction with the Lisburn Road, and a tramline running behind the terrace in Napier Street, which provided employment for some residents.

The occupants of the terrace were of varying social standing, mostly from the skilled manual, clerical, and supervisory classes, with many employed in the textile industry — in cloth manufacture, as drapers, tailors, and in associated trades. The Belfast Newsletter gives occasional glimpses of a less respectable side of life in the terrace as the city's population grew: in October 1867 Jane Crosbey of number 17 was summonsed for being disorderly in a public street, with magistrates having received information "as to the character of the house she kept." In October and November 1876 a story ran over several weeks in the Newsletter when a boarder at number 23 was accused of stealing a topcoat, umbrella, watch and chain, and £1 10s from a man staying the night in the dwelling, the episode culminating in a courtroom speech by the defendant followed by an angry riposte from his wife — the attention given to the story suggesting how uncommon such a crime was in mid-Victorian Belfast. By the time the 1901 and 1911 censuses provide a fuller picture, however, most houses were occupied by large extended families of the respectable skilled working classes, rarely able to afford a servant, with teenage children frequently contributing a wage.

The houses in the terrace were renumbered several times during the latter decades of the 19th century, making it difficult to trace individual residents with certainty. As far as can be determined, number 29 was first occupied in 1863–4 by John Hunter, a salesman at the Belfast Union Workhouse and Hospital, and William Boyce, a clerk and returning officer. Subsequent occupants included Mrs Hogg in 1865 and Samuel Hood in 1876–7. A long period of occupancy by the Harper family then followed, beginning with James Harper, a warehouseman, in 1884. Matthew Harper had taken over the house by 1889 and is variously described as a storeman and overlooker. In the 1901 census he gives his occupation as yarn store worker; he is recorded living with his wife and daughter, a dressmaker, and a boarder who is a handkerchief stitcher, with an English woman of 33, working as a ward mistress — possibly at the nearby maternity hospital — visiting at the time. By the 1911 census, Mary Jane Harper, widow, is living there with her daughter, a dressmaker, and two boarders: a 21-year-old from Ballykeel who is also a dressmaker, and a 54-year-old male musician from England.

The house remains in use as a domestic dwelling.