22 Joy Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT2 8LE

22 Joy Street is a mid-terraced three-storey redbrick Georgian townhouse built around 1840, situated on the corner of Joy Street and Catherine Street North in Belfast city centre. It forms part of a terrace of nine similar houses facing west along the east side of Joy Street, and is widely regarded as one of the finest surviving examples of late Georgian terraced housing in Belfast.

The building is rectangular on plan and sits beneath a pitched natural slate roof with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles and two rendered brick chimneystacks with clay pots. Cast-iron guttering runs along the brick eaves course, with a cast-iron downpipe below. The walls are of redbrick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing and a moulded plinth course. Window openings are square-headed with rendered reveals, painted masonry sills, and replacement six-over-six timber sash windows. The front elevation is two windows wide. The principal entrance features a round-headed door opening with a moulded surround incorporating a keystone, scribed pilasters, and impost mouldings. The replacement timber panelled door has a lintel cornice and a replacement fanlight, and opens onto a tiled step. An iron bootscraper is set into the wall with a rendered surround. The north side elevation abuts the neighbouring house at number 20, and the south side elevation abuts number 24. The rendered rear elevation is abutted by a single-storey return and contains both square-headed and round-headed window openings fitted with replacement six-over-six timber sash windows.

The terrace first appears on the 1858 edition of the Ordnance Survey map for Belfast, though it was built before that date. The neighbouring buildings on Hamilton Street were already under construction by 1832 to 1833, and Joy Street is known to have been established by 1843, when the Belfast Street Directories first recorded the terrace, though with a different numbering system at that time. By 1852 the directories recorded a David Duff, employed at the Northern Bank Co., as occupant of number 22. Griffith's Valuation of 1859 noted that a Ms Mary Anne Waugh had come into possession of the house, though she vacated it that same year when John Smyth, a coach maker, moved in. Smyth rented the property from a Mr Ebenezer Crawford at an annual rent of £18; Crawford also owned the rest of the terrace at that time. The valuer described the house as a three-storey B-plus class dwelling — meaning not new but in sound repair — measuring six by eight yards and valued at £16. John Smyth remained at the property until sometime before 1881, when a Mr David Patterson was recorded as occupant and continued to be listed as tenant until around 1905. However, the Belfast Street Directories of 1877 and 1880 record that a Mrs Elizabeth Frew was in fact in possession during part of that period and operated a Servants Registry Office from the premises. In 1884 the house was reduced in value to £15, as was the rest of the terrace in the same year, though the reason is not recorded. By the 1901 Census, John Harte, a Roman Catholic bricklayer, had come into possession. Like many residents in the Markets area, Harte let out rooms to boarders, many of whom were musical artists or actors performing at the nearby concert halls and theatres; on census day in 1901, four theatrical artists were resident in the house. The 1901 Census Building Return described it as a first-class dwelling with nine rooms, a figure repeated in the 1911 census. In 1900, when Harte was first recorded as occupant, the property was again reduced in value to £12 10s., though by 1906 this had risen to £14 when a Ms Charlotte Harding purchased the entire terrace from Ebenezer Crawford. Harte vacated the house between 1901 and 1907, and by the 1911 Census a Ms Julia McCabe had come into possession; McCabe and members of the Murray family, with whom she shared occupation, continued to reside at number 22 until the 1980s. In 1920, Charlotte Harding put numbers 14 to 26 Joy Street up for public auction, advertising the yearly rent for the terrace and a number of other attached buildings at £416 3s. The First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 recorded that the terrace had passed into the ownership of a Mr Joseph Tyney, who presumably acquired it at auction and whom the 1911 Census had described as a manufacturer of ship parts. At that time, number 22 was described simply as a private dwelling occupied by McCabe and valued at £21, rising to £22 in the second revaluation of 1956 to 1972. Occupation of the house continued to alternate between Julia McCabe and a Ms Rachel and A. Murray until the 1980s.

The street takes its name from a former paper mill in the area owned by Henry Joy, a relative of Henry Joy McCracken, the United Irishman. The mill formerly stood at the junction of Ormeau Avenue and Cromac Street, and the construction of its dam reclaimed acres of land to the south-east of Belfast's town centre at the turn of the 19th century. Joy Street and the surrounding Markets area were laid out during the late Georgian period, developing gradually southward from May Street across this reclaimed land. The substantial redbrick terraces erected around 1830 to 1840 were originally home to well-regarded merchants, but following the mass influx of working-class labourers into Belfast in the wake of the Great Famine, the merchant class had left the area by the 1850s, relocating to the new suburbs in Malone to the south. The buildings on Joy Street and Hamilton Street subsequently passed to working-class occupants, and several of the larger dwellings were converted into lodging and boarding houses. The establishment of Queen's College in 1849 also brought a significant student population to the Markets area seeking cheap lodgings, though this had largely moved away to accommodation nearer the university by around 1850 to 1870. After that second departure, the lodging houses in Joy Street and Hamilton Street became predominantly the domain of business lodgers and the performers who frequented the nearby music halls. Number 22 followed this pattern, serving for a time as a lodging house before returning to use as a private dwelling.

In the mid-1960s, the Sub-Committee of the Ancient Monuments Advisory Council recommended that numbers 14 to 26 Joy Street should be preserved as an excellent illustration of Georgian housing in pre-industrial Belfast. After years of decline, the terrace was restored for the Housing Executive between 1982 and 1986 by W. D. R. and R. T. Taggart, with work at number 22 carried out by Hearth Housing Association around 1985. The terrace has been described as the finest block of Georgian houses in Belfast and a good example of the grandeur and dignity of the Markets area as it was first developed. Number 22 was listed in 1985 along with the rest of the terrace and continues to be used as a private dwelling. Much of its historic architectural fabric remains intact, and it contributes significantly to the group value of the terrace as a whole, helping to ensure the survival of this rare concentration of late Georgian terraced housing in the centre of Belfast.