3 College Place North, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 6BE

No. 3 College Place North is an end-of-terrace, two-storey red brick house built around 1840, forming one of a group of four similar houses. It sits on a rectangular plan facing southeast, located in a cul-de-sac to the north of College Square North. Together with its neighbours at nos. 5–13 College Place North, it represents one of the very few surviving examples of late-Georgian and early-Victorian terraced housing at this scale remaining in Belfast city centre. The whole group forms a coherent 19th-century terrace of considerable townscape value.

Externally, the roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. The brick chimneystack to the south party wall (shared with No. 5) has been replaced and is topped with clay pots. Cast-iron guttering on iron brackets runs along the brick eaves course. The walls are laid in red brick in Flemish bond with cement pointing. Window openings are flat-arched with gauged brick heads, painted sandstone sills, and rendered reveals; the sash windows are replacement 6/6 timber units. The front elevation is two windows wide. To the right is a square-headed doorway containing a four-panelled timber door with bolection mouldings and a boarded overlight, the whole flanked by large plain console brackets supporting a hood cornice. The door opens onto a concrete step to the pavement, and the remains of a plinth wall from a former railed front area are still visible. The south side elevation is abutted by No. 5. The rear elevation was not inspected. The north gable is blank and adjoins industrial buildings belonging to the neighbouring yard.

The terrace was not present on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–33, which shows the area as vacant land, but it had been built by the time of the second edition in 1858. The construction of terraced streets to the west of Belfast's centre was driven in part by the opening of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in 1814 and the population growth of the Victorian period. A Historic Buildings Branch report of 1992 suggested that College Place North was erected as mews housing for servants working in the larger houses fronting College Square. The terrace was also noted to have once been closed off at the Killen Street end by a brick wall, with an opposing terrace on the southwest side that has since been demolished.

Griffith's Valuation of 1860 records that nos. 3–13 College Place North were owned by Thomas McCammon, a tanner, leather merchant and flour miller who operated from a tannery on King Street directly to the north. McCammon leased No. 3 to James Neill, an accountant clerk and chief administrator of McCammon's mill, initially valued at £9. Neill vacated around 1867 when McCammon transferred control of the company to him prior to his death in 1869, after which the business became Neill's Flour. Subsequent tenants included Thomas Hill, a weighmaster (recorded by 1877), and James McGill, a wool draper (recorded in 1880), though the Annual Revisions continued to list James Neill as occupant and Thomas McCammon as lessor throughout this period. By 1900 the terrace had passed into the ownership of Samuel Gibson, a druggist and general merchant with properties on King Street, and the house was revalued at £10 10s. with an annual rent of £17. The 1900 revaluation did not record specific details for No. 3, but adjoining nos. 7 and 9 were described at that time as two-storey dwellings of approximately 50 years in age, heated by gas and containing five rooms excluding the kitchen. By 1901 John Gourley, a retired porter aged 65, was living here with his wife Ellen and their three adult children; the 1901 Census classified the house as a second-class dwelling with six rooms. John Gourley had died by the 1911 Census, and his widow Ellen remained with her adult children. The Gourley family continued to occupy the house until at least 1918, when the directory records Ellen's son John, a collar cutter, as tenant; the Annual Revisions continued to list J. Gourley until their cancellation in 1930. By the First General Revaluation of 1935 the rateable value had risen to £14 10s. and a Patrick McCourt was recorded as tenant. The McCourt family remained into the Second General Revaluation period; an M. McCourt was listed in 1956, and by the end of the revaluation in 1972 the value had been slightly reduced to £14.

The architectural writer C. E. B. Brett, writing in 1985, described nos. 3–13 College Place North as "enchanting little two-storey mid-Georgian houses … real jewels with glazing bars all intact, 3 and 5 with their original fanlights," though he acknowledged they could not be earlier than 1832. The Georgian date Brett suggested is considered too early; the terrace was most likely constructed around 1840–50 during the Victorian development of the area around College Square. Marcus Patton, writing in 1993, described nos. 3–9 as an "obtuse-angled terrace of two-storey red-brick houses with some surviving three-lobe fanlights over four-panel doors in simple doorcases." The original fanlight of No. 3 has since been removed, though the glazing bars noted by Brett have been maintained or restored.

The terrace was listed in 1977, but in the years immediately following it fell into disrepair through neglect and vandalism, and by the 1990s more than half of the houses lay vacant. James Neill's original Victorian mill, which had stood in the shadow of the terrace since its construction during the Irish Famine and was remodelled in the 1880s, was demolished in 1986–87 and replaced with the present structure. In 1992 Neill's Mill applied for the delisting of College Place North with the intention of demolishing the terrace and incorporating the site into the factory. The application was rejected, and a restoration project was subsequently carried out on nos. 3–13, returning the terrace to its original character. The house is recorded as currently derelict and lies within a conservation area.