6 Mount Charles, Belfast

6 Mount Charles is a well-proportioned, symmetrically planned, stucco-fronted house with a portico, built around 1842 to designs by the Belfast architect Thomas Jackson (1807–1890) and converted to office use in the late 20th century. It stands on the north side of Mount Charles, a street linking University Road to the west with Botanic Avenue to the east in south Belfast, and forms part of a small group of similarly detailed houses at the western end of the street alongside Nos 2 and 4 Mount Charles. Together these three buildings provide a striking contrast to the tall red-brick Victorian terraces that characterise the rest of Mount Charles, and they enrich the Queens Conservation Area as a group. The building has a distinctly Regency character highly typical of Thomas Jackson's domestic work of the 1840s.

The house is three bays wide and two storeys tall, with an attic, and is L-shaped on plan with a two-storey extension to the rear. To the west it is abutted by a flat-roofed single-storey addition belonging to the adjoining No 4. The roof is covered in replacement natural Welsh slate, with two Velux windows to the rear (north) pitch and angled ridge tiles. Rainwater goods consist of extruded aluminium ogee gutters with uPVC downpipes mounted on a painted timber fascia, with a continuous eaves vent and a projecting cornice. The east gable has raked stucco banding rising to a painted rendered chimneystack with a moulded coping and three yellow terracotta octagonal pots, though this chimney is now considerably shorter than it originally was, possibly reduced during late 20th-century works.

The walls are finished in painted ruled-and-lined stucco over a projecting plinth, with a corniced stringcourse between the ground and first floor windows. The ground floor is framed by engaged panelled pilaster mouldings, and the ground floor window openings are set in advanced box bays with a cornice and raking blocking course. All window openings are square-headed. First floor windows are diminished in height compared to those below, and have bull-nosed cast masonry cills; ground floor windows have sloped concrete cills. The windows throughout are replacement timber sliding sashes with moulded architrave surrounds and profiled horns, glazed 6/6 on the ground floor and 3/6 on the first floor unless otherwise noted.

The principal elevation faces south and is symmetrically arranged with three openings on each floor. The central door is contained within a portico consisting of a canopy with a dentilled cornice supported on two slender Doric-type columns on stone pedestals. The square-headed door opening has a bolection-moulded four-panelled timber door with brass furniture, surmounted by an original coloured leaded transom light, and is accessed by two bull-nosed stone steps. The west elevation has a single window at each floor level on its right side. The north elevation is largely concealed from public view by a tall rear boundary wall, and is mostly abutted by a gabled two-bay three-storey return detailed to match the main building. The east elevation has a single window at ground floor level on its left side and is abutted by a red-brick gateway to the rear yard.

Thomas Jackson was a highly regarded Belfast architect responsible for several prominent public buildings in the city, including St Malachy's Roman Catholic Church on Alfred Street and the Old Town Hall on Victoria Street. While Larmour (1987) attributes Nos 2 and 4 Mount Charles directly to Jackson, Brett (1985) considers Nos 2 to 6 to have been built together, and the Second Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1859 confirms that No 6 was among the first properties constructed on the street. The development of Mount Charles coincided with the establishment of Queen's College and the wider residential expansion of south Belfast in the early Victorian era, making these houses an important precursor to the late Victorian terraces more commonly associated with the University and Upper Malone districts.

The Griffith's Valuation (1847–1864) records that No 6, and indeed the entire street, was owned by Bernard Hughes (1808–1878), more widely known as 'Barney' Hughes. A wealthy Roman Catholic philanthropist and owner of Hughes Bakery, he is perhaps best remembered for creating the 'Belfast Bap' during the years of the Great Famine (1845–1852), providing cheap bread for the working-class population of the city. In the 1850s Hughes offered a portion of his Mount Charles properties to the Redemptorists, a Roman Catholic missionary congregation, but this proposal was overturned by the Lord Bishop of Down and Connor, Cornelius Denvir (1791–1865), on account of the site's proximity to St Malachy's.

The first recorded occupant of No 6 was James Bruce (1808–1861), a Scottish-born author and newspaper editor who came to Belfast to take up the editorship of the Northern Whig. After Bruce's death in 1861, the house passed briefly to a William J. Shaw, then around 1877 to William Gray (1830–1917), an architect who served as District Surveyor for the Board of Works in Belfast from 1862 to 1895. By 1906 the Valuation Revisions record that all properties on Mount Charles had passed to Sir John Fegan (also spelt Fagan), chief surgeon at the Royal Victoria Hospital and later Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools in Ireland. His wife, Mary Catherine Fagan, had the maiden name Hughes, suggesting that Dr Fegan may have inherited the properties through marriage, though the precise family connection to Bernard Hughes is uncertain. The house appears to have remained in residential use into the mid-20th century, with street directories recording a William T. Adair in residence from 1901 to around 1940, followed by a Dr Charlotte C. Arnold.

Along with Nos 2 and 4, the building was badly damaged by two bombs in 1973 and 1974. Brett (1985), writing before the subsequent restoration, noted that "No 6 had lost its portico, and was shabbily painted, but still retained its splendid tall single chimney," and photographs from around that time also show some inappropriate lean-to extensions abutting the western gable. Nos 2 and 4 were restored by Robert McKinstry and Melvyn Brown in 1982. Planning permission and listed building consent were granted in August 1990 for extension, alterations and refurbishment, which is likely when No 6 was converted to office use and received its current internal layout including the rear extension. The portico was probably restored at this time, and the lean-to extensions were replaced by a larger extension to No 4 that fills the gap between the buildings. Despite the loss and renewal of a significant proportion of original fabric, the character of the building has been carefully maintained through the refurbishment.