276 Tennent Street, Edenderry Gardens, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT13 3GG

276 Tennent Street (formerly known as No.10 Edenderry Gardens) is an asymmetrical, two-bay, two-storey-with-attic terraced brick house with a wall-head dormer and canted bay windows, built between 1907 and 1909 on the western side of Tennent Street in the Shankill area of Belfast. It was designed by the Belfast architectural partnership of Robert Hill and Edwin Kennedy and constructed by the Edenderry Spinning Company, whose flax spinning mill occupied the land immediately to the west. The house forms part of Edenderry Terrace, a group of similar houses (a terrace group recorded together) built in stages over the same period. As a group, these houses demonstrate key elements of the Arts and Crafts movement — including dormers, bay windows, roughcast render and irregular rooflines — but the group as a whole has suffered from inappropriate incremental changes, and the loss of historic fabric and detailing has seriously compromised their interest to the point where they are no longer considered of special architectural or historic interest. This record is retained for documentary purposes only, and the building was removed from the statutory list on 21 August 2015.

The house faces east and is rectilinear on plan, with a two-storey gabled return, a single-storey lean-to structure and an internal courtyard to the rear. The lean-to extension spans the full width of the rear elevation and is considered of no interest. The roof is pitched with red clay tiles and roll-moulded red clay ridge tiles. There is a single replacement brick chimney with plain clay pots. A wall-head dormer window rises to the attic with a matching pitched roof and brick coping, and there is a central modern skylight to the rear roof slope. The eaves are formed in moulded brick. Cast iron half-round rainwater goods serve the east elevation, with a decorative hopper; the remaining rainwater goods are uPVC, mounted on plain timber fascia.

The walling to the principal elevations is laid in Flemish bond brick with decorative terracotta vents. The rear walling is laid in English Garden Wall bond with painted roughcast to the first floor. Windows throughout are uPVC with flat arch heads; sills are offset painted brick, with some concrete sills to the rear ground floor. The principal east elevation is two openings wide at ground floor. The front door is a brown uPVC door set within a moulded brick camber-arch surround featuring an egg-and-dart motif, surmounted by a deeply projecting monopitched timber canopy with a red-tile roof, decorative flashing and a carved fascia. To the right of the door is a segmental-headed window with a replacement brick sill, flanked by modern shutters on each side and surmounted by a label mould. At first floor, there is a central flat-roofed canted bay window supported on timber corbels.

The south elevation abuts the adjoining terrace at No.274 Tennent Street, with a high gable wall extending through the eaves line separating the two properties. The north elevation abuts the adjoining property to that side of the terrace. The rear west elevation contains the two-storey pitched-roof return; its south cheek is blank, and the west gable has a central window above a replacement single-storey lean-to structure in brick with a slated roof, formerly the coal shed. The north cheek of the return contains an enlarged window and door at ground floor and a small window at first floor. The principal rear elevation has a central window at ground and first floor, with roughcast render to the first floor, and an attic window to the left side above the return. The rear boundary wall has been rebuilt and modified, and a single-storey monopitched extension spans the full length of the rear; this is considered of no interest.

The house sits on the western side of Tennent Street in an urban setting between the Crumlin and Shankill Roads. To the front (east) along Tennent Street there is a small, newly paved garden enclosed by a rebuilt dwarf brick wall with balustrade and a replacement metal gate. To the rear is a long, narrow garden plot running west to the boundary wall. A paved walkway extends along the rear of all properties in the terrace, between the garden plots and the back of the buildings, though this has been sealed with locked gates to the south. To the west, on the site of the former Edenderry Spinning Mill, there is now a mixed-use business park and apartment complex. Crumlin Road Presbyterian Church lies to the north-east on the corner of Crumlin Road and Tennent Street.

The area developed rapidly during the mid-19th century as a consequence of the thriving linen industry and the expanding industrial workforce. The site on which the terrace was built had previously formed part of the Edenderry flax spinning mill complex and remained undeveloped until construction began. The house first appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1920–31. Its construction is confirmed by the Annual Revisions of 1906–15, in which the house and yard were added in 1909 at a rateable value of £14. The property was listed as vacant until 1911, when the first recorded occupant was Charles Crawford, a grocer from County Tyrone, who lived there with his wife and three young daughters according to the 1911 Census. The house first appears as No.10 Edenderry Gardens in the 1910 Street Directory, though in subsequent decades it was renumbered as part of Tennent Street.

The house was designed and built as a single-family dwelling, representative of the design ethos of early 20th-century terrace housing — providing rear yard access via a passage at the front, a number of sizable windows on the main elevation, and the modern amenities of the time. This was a deliberate improvement on the conditions common before the building and sanitation regulations of the late 19th century, when houses were frequently shared by multiple families with no drainage, water supply or rear access, and waste from the privy and ash pit had to be carried through the scullery.

By the first General Revaluation of 1935, the rateable value of the house and garden had risen to £20, and the property was occupied by William Hutchinson. The Edenderry Spinning Company retained ownership of the house until at least the second General Revaluation period of 1956–72. The Spinning Company continued to operate on the site to the rear until 1988, after which the area became an industrial park. A number of modern decorative additions and minor alterations to the main elevation have replaced original features. A new wall has been added to the front garden, the secondary access route to the rear garden has been maintained, and the rear garden itself retains only some of its original form.