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

35 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced parlour house, built around 1896–1898 on the west side of McMaster Street in Ballymacarrett, East Belfast. It was developed by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, and forms part of a complete street of 37 parlour houses constructed in several phases between 1899 and 1908. Number 35 sits towards the south end of the terrace, where the last four houses — numbers 31 to 37 — are built on a shallower and wider plan than the rest of the street, owing to the tapering nature of the plot. It is a wider end-terrace unit at its south end, and has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street.

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and a red brick chimney stack at the south side. Rainwater goods are painted ogee-profile cast iron, supported on projecting polychromatic brick eaves course over an ovolo-moulded corbel course and string course. The walls are roughcast rendered. Windows are replacement uPVC casements and the door is a replacement timber panelled door; both are set within camber-headed reveals with smooth rendered plain reveals and projecting masonry sills. The principal east elevation is symmetrical: the entrance door sits centrally, accessed via a tiled threshold, flanked by a single window on each side, each with a corresponding window above at first floor level.

The north gable abuts number 33 McMaster Street. The south gable abuts a single-storey extension (details not visible from street level), which is enclosed by a red brick boundary wall to the east. Access to the enclosed rear yard is via a timber-sheeted entrance door set into high-level brick walling at the east, reached from the entry running north to south between the back yards of Parker Street and McMaster Street. The rear elevation itself was not accessible for inspection. The enclosed yard abuts number 37 McMaster Street to the south.

The walling is in English garden-wall bonded red brick beneath the roughcast render.

The house sits at the south end of the west terrace block, facing onto McMaster Street. The street is wide — formerly cobbled but now largely concrete, with small cobbled areas at each end — and the house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs. Original lamp posts with electric lighting (formerly gas) remain in place, and original tiled street signage survives at both the north and south ends of the street. The street narrows towards Major Street at the south.

McMaster Street is the only late Victorian terrace in Belfast to have survived in reasonably original condition. It was built close to the Harland and Wolff shipyards on Queen's Island, which by 1900 employed around 9,000 men. Ballymacarrett, which in the mid-19th century had been a mix of fields, cottages, mansions and an industrial core, was gradually transformed in the closing decades of that century into dense rows of terraced housing for the workers who drove Belfast's industrial prosperity. Alongside shipbuilding, the area supported ropeworks, linen manufacture, engineering and fertiliser industries, all trading on a worldwide scale.

McMaster Street was built in phases. The first phase — numbers 2 to 14, built to two-and-a-half storeys — was in place by 1899. Numbers 1 to 11, also two-and-a-half storeys, appeared in the 1900 street directory alongside notes of houses still under construction. By the time of the March 1901 census, numbers 1 to 35 were complete, and the remaining houses, numbers 16 to 52, were added by 1908. The designers, John Fraser and Son, were active between the 1890s and 1910s and were responsible for several similar terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place.

The houses on the west side of McMaster Street first appear in valuation records in 1900. They are of the parlour-house type and were built to a high specification, with running water and flush toilets — both emerging technologies for workers' housing at the time. Building regulations required each house to have a rear entrance and a back yard with a toilet. Gas was piped in for lighting; electricity did not become commonplace until the 1930s, and lamp-lighters and window-tappers were daily visitors to the street. The larger houses at the north end, with their attic storeys, typically housed larger families. Male inhabitants were commonly employed in shipbuilding; females often worked in the linen or rope industry.

Number 35 was originally leased by John Bell from the developer John McMaster. A 1900 valuation described it as four years old, though it was probably no more than a year old at that time. Numbers 13 to 37 — all two-storey houses and yards — were valued at £8 each, slightly lower than numbers 1 to 11 at the north end. The house contained three bedrooms and was fitted with gas; the weekly rent was five shillings and the estimated cost of construction was £76.

The 1901 census records the occupier as Samuel Carson, a plater in the shipyard, living with his wife, their eight-year-old son, and a lodger from "Arbeenshire" (as recorded). By 1911, the son James Carson was working as a clerk in a linen warehouse. Subsequent tenants included William Dorman in 1921, followed by J. Haire, an iron turner, who later moved to number 19. The Haire family was forced to leave during the Belfast Blitz of 1941. Belfast suffered four air raids during April and May of that year, during which over half the city's housing stock was damaged. McMaster Street was targeted in the raids of 7–8 April and 4–5 May 1941, and the 1942 street directory records that most houses in the street had been vacated, including number 33, probably as a result of fire damage. By 1943 the majority of residents had returned, including the Haires, who moved to number 19. Number 35 was taken over that year by William Ruth, a shipwright, and the Ruth family remained resident until at least 1980.

In recent decades, East Belfast has undergone substantial change, and many of the industries that drove its growth have contracted or disappeared. Redevelopment in the 1970s led to the demolition of many surrounding terraces. McMaster Street was listed in 1987 and in 1994 was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment. Two houses in the street have been restored by the Hearth housing association. Number 35 retains much of its original character, including the polychromatic brick string courses and camber-headed window openings, though the replacement uPVC windows and doors are noted as alterations that detract from the building's architectural integrity.