43 Malone Road, Belfast

43 Malone Road is a mid-terrace, four-storey, two-bay red brick late Victorian town house, built in 1886–87 to designs by the Belfast architect William Eaton, who was then based on Botanic Avenue. It forms part of a continuous terrace of nine similar houses running between Malone Avenue and Eglantine Avenue on the north end of the west side of Malone Road, originally known as Windsor Gardens. The terrace was developed on the former grounds of Eglantine Hill, a pre-1832 house, and was commissioned by a James Johnston, believed to be an insurance agent operating from Waring Street whose name appears in contemporary trade directories. The whole group was substantially complete by mid-1888 and fully occupied by 1890. Number 43 is currently combined in use with the adjoining No. 45 as commercial offices.

The nine houses — Nos. 37–41 and 43–53 — form one of the most impressive terraces within the Malone Road Conservation Area. The principal frontage is striking for the strong rhythm created by each house having a full-height bowed bay topped by a conical slate roof, combined with a wealth of ornate detailing. The terrace is rectangular in plan on a north–south axis with gabled ends. Numbers 43 and 45 sit mid-terrace and are handed as mirror images of each other in both plan and elevation.

ROOFS AND EXTERNAL MATERIALS

The main roof is covered in natural slate with bands of fish-scale slates, black clay ridge tiles, and red terracotta ridge tiles and finials to the bowed bay. The three-storey return is covered in artificial slates with a black ridge tile. The flat-roofed rear extension, added around 1995, uses precast concrete paving slabs as its roof finish.

A large red brick chimney sits centrally on the ridge of the main roof, capped with simple corbelled brick coursing and eight circular yellow clay pots; the top six courses have been replaced with a modern, smoother brick. Cast iron guttering is supported on scrolled terracotta brackets to the front elevation, with a projecting eaves course at that level; uPVC guttering and circular-section rainwater pipes serve the rear and return. The bowed bay rises above the main eaves line, highlighted by a cornice of classical stucco ornamentation immediately below the gutter.

Walls to the principal front elevation are laid in red brick to Flemish bond with painted render and stone dressings; the return uses a variation of English Garden Wall bond.

FRONT ELEVATION (EAST)

The front elevation faces east and is two bays wide, with the bowed bay offset to the right and the entrance to the left. There is a deep painted render base plinth with a chamfered top, projecting moulded cill and string courses, and a textured render plat band at each floor level, all painted. The bowed bay is also finished in textured render, except for some brick header courses between floor levels, and carries incised decoration in the render above the bay windows along with an edge roll moulding.

The entrance door is set within a textured render surround to a segmental-headed opening (notably without the hood and label stops seen on other houses in the terrace), positioned above the plat band. The surround incorporates pink marble colonnettes on a dressed sandstone plinth with painted capitals, above which is a plain fanlight over a square-headed five-panelled timber door. Toothed rendered quoins sit below the plat band, and a decorative painted terracotta panel sits above the door head. The pink marble colonnettes and terracotta panel motif are repeated on the first- and second-floor windows above the entrance. Windows are single-glazed painted timber sliding sashes with 1-over-1 panes throughout, with the exception of one replacement timber sliding sash — single-glazed with 1-over-1 panes, matching the originals — to the north-facing window of the bowed bay at second-floor level.

REAR ELEVATION (WEST)

The rear elevation faces west onto a shared alley and is more plainly detailed, with soldier-coursed window heads and projecting brick headers to the eaves. To the right (south), a three-storey return joins the equivalent return at No. 45 to form a wider shared gabled return than is found in the rest of the terrace; this has a painted timber bargeboard.

Fenestration on the return includes a timber-framed casement window with concrete head and cill at second-floor level, uPVC-framed slide-back double-glazed patio doors with a rendered surround at first-floor level, and at ground floor a projecting flat-roofed extension built in smooth red brick containing a uPVC door, a porthole window, and large multi-paned windows. The extension has a raised parapet with a semi-circular cut-out and radial metal guarding. This extension, added around 1995, spans the full width of No. 43, encompasses the yard, and projects approximately 1 metre beyond the west face of the return. The extension roof incorporates a uPVC-framed duo-pitched glass lantern. An external chequer-plate metal stair rises in front of the door to the first-floor flat roof and connects to a matching chequer-plate deck cantilevered from No. 45, providing a means of escape from both properties.

To the left of the return, the main building has one window at each level: uPVC at first floor, and timber sliding sashes with 2-over-2 panes at second floor and 1-over-1 panes at third floor. A further uPVC window sits above the return at the uppermost half-landing, and to the right of this is a small timber casement window with a top-hung night vent. A ghost mark of a single-storey gabled extension — now removed — is visible on the west elevation of the return.

NORTH AND SOUTH ELEVATIONS

The south face, including the return, is fully abutted by No. 45. The north face is fully abutted by No. 41. The north elevation of the return has informal fenestration: one surviving timber-framed sliding sash at second-floor level, a flush modern door at first-floor level to the far left, and the remaining openings widened with concrete heads and cills fitted with modern timber-framed casement windows. A projecting boxed timber eaves supports an ogee-profile uPVC gutter along this elevation.

INTERIOR

Although the building has been converted to offices with substantial alterations to the return and the addition of the single-storey rear extension — resulting in some loss of integrity and plan form — the domestic scale remains legible. Some fine historic detailing survives inside, contributing to the building's character.

SETTING

The house is set back from a tree-lined street, with a paved front garden bounded by a low rendered wall with a rounded (not coped) top and a galvanised steel tubular rail. The front garden is surfaced in precast concrete paving slabs, with modern quarry-tiled steps shared across the entrances to Nos. 43 and 45. A young tree stands in the front garden, with white pebbles hard-set to a border at the bay. The terrace sits directly opposite Fisherwick Presbyterian Church, and from this vantage point — at the corner of Chlorine Gardens — the group is particularly impressive.

To the rear, the yard is enclosed by a concrete block wall shared with No. 45 to form a car park, with a splayed section opening southward to the alley. The wall is topped by palisade fencing and projects further west than the boundaries of adjoining properties. An electrical substation enclosed by palisade fencing occupies the north-east corner of the yard, accessed by a door opening north onto the alley.

HISTORICAL OCCUPANCY

The first recorded occupant was a James C. Mayrs, a furniture seller with a cabinet and carpet warehouse at the corner of Royal Avenue and Garfield Street. Around 1895–96 the lease passed to a Miss Kelly, followed around 1898 by Robert George Wallace, a linen manufacturer. The 1901 census records the building as a first-class dwelling of 15 rooms, occupied by Mr. Wallace, his wife Bertha Anna, their son and daughter, and two domestic servants. Mrs Mary Mackie is recorded as tenant in 1907, followed in 1910 by Frederick Patrick Hughes of the flour milling firm Hughes, Dickson & Co., who in the 1911 census is listed as living there with his wife Mary Eliza, their three children, a housekeeper, and a domestic servant. A Lady Fullen is listed in the 1915 street directory, Mrs Mary Elliott in 1918, and W. Aiken in 1930. By 1935 the property was in multiple occupancy, with T.W. Gibson, Miss Orr, and Miss Thompson all listed as residents; eight residents were recorded in 1940, nine in 1945, and varying numbers through the following fifteen years. The property is recorded as vacant in 1960 and appears to have remained largely unused for much of the following decade. By 1974 it was occupied by McConnell's advertising agency and a tourist agent, the latter replaced by an architect's office by the mid-1980s. McConnell's is recorded as sole occupant in 1990; by 1996 the building contained three offices occupied respectively by an architects' practice, and an insurance and an assurance firm. The building was listed in November 1991. The extension to the return was added around 2007.