40 Sunnyside St., Belfast

40 Sunnyside Street, Belfast is a two-storey red-brick terrace house built in 1904. It forms one of a row of twenty-one terraced houses on the south side of Sunnyside Street, approximately 3 kilometres from Belfast city centre. The street connects the Ormeau Road with Annadale Embankment and is a busy canted thoroughfare. No. 40 is a good example of modest Edwardian urban terraced housing, built during a period of rapid suburban expansion southwards from Belfast city centre along the main thoroughfares.

The house is rectangular on plan with a rectangular two-storey mono-pitched return added in 1988. The main structure retains significant external character. The roof is natural slate with a red-brick chimney stack on the right-hand side, featuring a projecting brick course and clay pots. The walls are laid in English Garden Wall bond smooth red clay brick with clay ventilation bricks at each level and a blue-brick course at eaves level with a projecting moulded brick course supporting cast metal ogee guttering.

The front elevation faces north and displays a painted timber four-panel door to the left with a semi-circular head and moulded architrave. To the right is a 2/2 painted timber sliding-sash window with a segmental head and moulded architrave. A similar but smaller window is positioned almost centrally on the first floor. The windows are single-glazed. Cast iron rainwater guttering fronts the building, with uPVC to the rear.

The rear elevation faces south and the original main house has two top-hung painted timber windows positioned one above the other. The two-storey extension of 1988 is constructed in rustic red clay brick with top-hung windows and thin concrete sills. The extension has a single window at first-floor level in its yard elevation. A narrow rectangular paved yard lies between the original house and the extension. Beyond this is a good-sized garden set in grass, separated from a communal lane to the rear by a waist-level concrete block wall. It is likely that originally there would have been a 2.5-metre red-brick wall in this location.

The side elevations abut the neighbouring properties at nos. 38 and 42 Sunnyside Street.

The front boundary consists of a replacement red-brick wall and gateway with painted metal railings and a small painted metal arched gate. This boundary treatment, along with new front doors and windows, was installed around 1988 as part of an improvement scheme encompassing the whole terrace. The small front garden is finished in concrete block paviors.

The rear of the terrace is bounded to the south by a communal laneway shared with Whitehall Gardens.

Despite the 1988 rear extension and remodelling of the original interior and front boundary, the building retains significant group value with the rest of the terrace.

Sunnyside Street is first shown on the Ordnance Survey town plan of 1871-73 as a lane stretching from the Ormeau Road to the current junction with Whitehall Parade, with only a terrace of six houses on the north side marked as 'Sunnyside' (present nos. 43-53). On Marcus Ward's 1879 map of Belfast it is designated 'Sunnyside Street' and extends slightly further west, but no new developments are marked on maps from 1883-84 and 1896. By the 1901-03 Ordnance Survey plan, nos. 14-24 are shown, with further development on the northern side and the street extended to Walmer Street, with brick fields between this and the River Lagan. The opening of King's Bridge in 1912 allowed the street to reach its current extent, creating a thoroughfare linking directly through to Ridgeway Street on the other side of the River Lagan.

The long terrace of which No. 40 forms part comprises twenty-one dwellings which, although virtually identical, date from slightly different periods. Nos. 14-24 appear on the 1903 Ordnance Survey map and were recorded in the valuation book that year. Nos. 26-42 were entered into the valuation book the following year, and nos. 44-52 were first noted in the succeeding book in 1910. Hugh Scott appears to have been the developer of nos. 14-42, listed as the lessor for all these properties in 1906. The identity of the architect, if one was involved, is not known.

The first occupant of No. 40 was Hugh Rea, noted in street directories as a baker. The 1911 census records the building as a second-class dwelling containing five rooms, with Mr. Rea occupying the property with his wife Rachel, his daughter Jane, their two children and his wife's widowed mother, Mary Fraser. The Rea family continued to live at the property until at least 1935. Miss A.M. Thompson is noted as occupant in 1943, the Rea family returned by 1945, and Miss Thompson again by 1951. In 1967, R. Hobson, a Corporation official, is recorded as the occupant, Cowan Dorman in 1980, and Joan M. Broder in 1990. Ms Broder remained in residence in 1995, but the property has changed hands at least once since then. The property was listed in 1986.