34 McMaster Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT5 4HP

34 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay terraced house built around 1898 on the west side of McMaster Street in East Belfast, to designs by J. Frazer and Son for developer John McMaster. It forms part of a complete and largely intact street of late Victorian terraced housing in the Ballymacarrett area, and has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street.

EXTERIOR

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and a red brick chimney stack at the south side. Cast-iron rainwater goods of ogee profile are supported on projecting polychromatic brick eaves courses over an ovolo moulded corbel course. The walls are built in English garden-wall bond — red brick laid with alternating courses of headers and stretchers — and feature two polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick and sill course at first floor level. With the exception of the polychromatic brickwork above the first floor windows, all polychromatic brickwork is now painted.

The principal (west) elevation faces onto McMaster Street. The entrance door is positioned to the left and accessed via a concrete threshold, flanked by a window to the right; the door is timber-panelled with a camber-headed transom light above. At first floor level there are two windows, offset slightly to the right. All windows to the front elevation are 1/1 sliding sash. All window and door openings are contained within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and projecting masonry sills.

The north gable abuts No. 32 McMaster Street and the south gable abuts No. 36 McMaster Street. The ground floor of the rear (south) elevation is partly abutted on the right by a single-storey lean-to extension running from the north boundary wall, which has modern brick walling, a timber fascia, and uPVC rainwater goods. There is a single window at ground floor right and two windows at first floor. The rear of the property is enclosed by high-level stretcher-bonded modern red brick walling with a painted, vertically-sheeted timber entrance door at the centre, accessed via a narrow entry running north to south between the back yards of Lendrick Street and McMaster Street.

SETTING

The house sits at the middle of the east terrace two-storey block, opening directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs. The street, formerly cobbled, is now largely concrete with small cobbled areas at each end. Original lamp posts and electric lighting (formerly gas lights) remain in place, along with original tiled street signage at both the north and south ends. The street narrows towards Major Street at the south.

HISTORY

No. 34 McMaster Street first appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map for Belfast, dated 1920–21, by which point both terraces of McMaster Street had been completed. Belfast Street Directories indicate that while the western terrace (Nos 1–37) and Nos 6–14 on the eastern terrace were built in 1898 and 1899, the remainder of the eastern terrace (Nos 16–52), including No. 34, was not completed until 1908. The land on which the street was built was owned by John McMaster, who held land on the south side of the Newtownards Road. Because the plot was wedge-shaped, the terraced houses became progressively narrower and had smaller gardens as they were built towards the end of the street.

The architect, John Frazer and Sons, was active from the 1890s into the early decades of the twentieth century and also designed other Belfast terraced streets including Chadwick Street (built 1899) and Meadowbank Place, both of similar design to McMaster Street.

The parlour houses on McMaster Street were built to new housing and planning regulations intended to improve living standards in Belfast. They were among the first late Victorian industrial houses in the city to be supplied with running water and flushable toilets, made possible by the construction of a new city drainage system. Gas was also piped into each house to provide lighting. These amenities set McMaster Street apart from the more squalid early Victorian housing common in Belfast at the time. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s.

Annual Revisions record that the first occupant of No. 34 was a Mr William McClurg, who took possession in the year the terrace was completed (1908), when the house was valued at £8 and let by John McMaster. The 1908 Belfast Street Directory records that McClurg was employed as a riveter at the nearby shipyards. By the 1911 Census, a Mr Alexander Reid — described as a Presbyterian sign writer — is recorded at the property, though Belfast Street Directories for 1910 and 1918 list a Mr William Reid, a painter by trade, as the occupant. The 1911 Census Building Return described No. 34 as a second-class dwelling consisting of seven rooms.

By 1930, the house had passed to a Mr C. Cranston, employed as a machine operator at the shipyards. The rateable value remained at £8 through the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930, rising to £11 in the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935.

McMaster Street escaped damage during the 1941 Belfast Blitz, when Luftwaffe raids on the nearby shipyards caused widespread destruction to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road. The post-war Second General Revaluation recorded that ownership of the street had passed from John McMaster to an L. McMaster (relationship unknown). At that time No. 34 was occupied by a Mr Thomas Kennedy, employed as a general labourer, whose rateable value was recorded as £12; he continued to reside at the property into the 1970s.

During the 1970s, the Ballymacarrett area was extensively redeveloped and many similar red brick terraces were demolished. McMaster Street survived as an intact example of late Victorian working-class housing. No. 34 was listed in 1987 along with the rest of the terrace, and in 1994 the neighbourhood was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment, with criteria established to ensure that any additions to the terrace remained in keeping with the original design and materials of the street.