14 College Gardens, Belfast

14 College Gardens is an end-of-terrace, three-storey with attic, double-fronted red brick late Victorian town house, built in 1877. The architect is unknown, though the building is similar in style to the adjacent block designed by William Batt. It forms the eastern end of a block of four properties together with Nos. 11, 12 and 13 College Gardens, the block being largely symmetrical to the front: No. 11 mirrors No. 14 at the opposite gable end, with the narrower Nos. 12 and 13 occupying the middle. The building has been subdivided into self-contained apartments.

The house sits near the eastern end of College Gardens, a tree-lined street of similarly scaled town houses running between Malone Road and Lisburn Road, within the Queens Conservation Area. The buildings face south and overlook the grounds of Methodist College.

EXTERIOR

The roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. There are two replacement red brick chimneys — one shared with No. 13, the other centred on the gable end — each fitted with several circular clay pots. The eaves have a projecting moulded profile on a plain frieze band, set between projecting moulded string courses; these are returned at the gable ends to form the base of a simple painted timber verge detail and projecting timber bargeboard. Two wide duo-pitched dormers sit to the front of the roof, aligned with the bays to either side of the entrance door; these appear to be contemporary with the extension added around 1995. Modern skylights are present on the rear roof slope.

Rainwater goods consist of ogee-profile cast metal gutters and square-section downpipes. The front and east elevations are of red brick laid in Flemish bond with painted dressings; the north elevation uses English Garden Wall bond. Windows to the south elevation and ground floor of the east elevation are replacement double-glazed sliding sash with 1-over-1 panes; elsewhere, replacement timber windows have top-hung casements with faux horns.

Front Elevation (South): The principal façade faces south and is symmetrical, with a central entrance flanked by single-storey projecting bays. The bay to the right (east) is squared and has two windows; the bay to the left is canted. A painted render base plinth has a moulded and chamfered top with toothed quoins to the south-west corner. The bays are finished in painted stucco, each with a parapet roof, a foliated moulded cornice, and a plain frieze with a serrated lower edge. Above the bays, the walls are predominantly red brick, with projecting moulded string courses serving as cills at first and second floor levels. Openings are segmental arched throughout: a single window appears above the entrance at each upper level, flanked on each side by a pair of windows aligned with the ground floor bays. Surrounds are in moulded stucco, with projecting hoods at first floor and lugged surrounds at second floor. The ground floor bay windows have stop-chamfered heads and jambs, with heavy bull-nosed cills set within reveals.

The entrance door is a square-headed replacement timber door with multi-paned glazed upper panels and moulded lower panels, beneath a plain glass fanlight set over a deep moulded transom. The surround has a moulded base to either side, a roll-edged reveal, a raised keystone, and carved stone spandrels below the cornice, all painted. The door opens onto two stone steps set between painted dwarf walls with open balustrades and square end piers, all with painted canted caps.

Rear Elevation (North): The north elevation overlooks Elmwood Mews and is largely obscured by the 1995 L-shaped gabled extension, which abuts the original building between a single bay to the far east and far west. The detailing is simpler than the front, with a projecting brick eaves course, soldier-coursed brick headers, and unpainted cills. Windows have been replaced, though the openings appear original: one window at each of the first and second floors to the east of the extension, and one window at each of the ground, first, and second floors to the west, diminishing in height.

East Elevation: Abutted by No. 13 College Gardens. The east face of the extension is largely blank.

West (Gable) Elevation: The gable is of red brick in Flemish bond. At ground floor level, two segmental-headed windows with moulded stucco surrounds are centred on the elevation; above these is one similar square-headed window, with new openings inserted at first and second floor levels. The gable is otherwise blank. Ground floor windows are replacement timber sliding sash; those above are top-hung timber casements.

SETTING

The building is set back from the tree-lined street by painted modern metal railings on a low red brick wall along the south side of College Gardens. A painted metal gate — with posts that may be original — opens onto a concrete path flanked by gravelled areas with semi-mature planting and trees. A mature tree and hedging run along the western boundary. The 1995 rear extension fills the width of the site along the northern boundary.

A SUBSTANTIAL EXTENSION AND ALTERATIONS

A substantial four-storey extension over a car park was added to the rear around 1995. It is largely concealed from view on College Gardens but diminishes the historic character at the rear to some extent. This extension replaced an original rear return and is of little historic interest. Two wide duo-pitched dormers to the front roof slope also appear to date from this period.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

College Gardens takes its name from its proximity to Methodist College, which was completed in 1868 on land formerly occupied by Vermont, a house of pre-1770 origin that had been possibly rebuilt or enlarged around 1815 and again in the 1840s by John Riddell, a Belfast ironmonger. The wider area had, prior to the early 19th century, formed part of a series of strip farms running from what is now Malone Road and University Road towards the Bog Meadows. These farms were probably laid out in the early 17th century; their integrity was broken up by the cutting of Lisburn Road between 1816 and 1819 and the construction of the Ulster Railway between 1837 and 1839. The building of Queen's College to the north-east in 1845 sparked suburbanisation of the area. When Vermont was sold in 1865 for Methodist College, a new private avenue was laid out on the lower ground immediately to the north, with building plots along the northern side. Development proceeded from the eastern end: the present Nos. 1–6 were built in 1871, Nos. 7–18 in 1877, Nos. 33 and 34 in 1879, Nos. 19–22 in 1881, Nos. 23–26 in 1882, and Nos. 27–32 in 1883.

No. 14 belongs to the 1877 phase of construction. The developer of this block and those westward as far as No. 32 appears to have been the Reverend George Cron, then minister of the Evangelical Union Church in Wellington Place; his monogram is believed to appear on the entrance keystone of all properties in this block. The first recorded occupant of No. 14 was George Fuller, Professor of Civil Engineering at Queen's College (now Queen's University Belfast). John W. Haslett of J. & J. Haslett, chemists and druggists of 18–20 North Street, took up the lease around 1885, followed in 1900 by Robert Thomas Martin, a solicitor. The 1901 census records Mr Martin living there with his wife Edith, their two young children, and three domestic servants, in a first-class dwelling with 16 rooms in use. The 1911 census return is similar, though with only one child still in residence. Mrs Martin is listed as householder in the 1924 directory; by 1932 Howard Stevenson, a surgeon, is recorded as the occupant, remaining there until at least 1943. By 1951 the property had become a nurses' home in the hands of Belfast City Hospital, changing to a hospital doctors' residence in the early 1970s, a use which continued into the late 1980s.

No. 14 College Gardens was first listed in 1979, at which time it was in the ownership of the Department of Health and Social Services. It was subsequently delisted — in accordance with the policy then applicable to Crown-owned property — and relisted in 1994. Declared surplus in 1990, it was reported as being at risk and empty for seven to eight years as at 1994. That year an application was submitted to subdivide the property into seven apartments and add a substantial full-height rear extension in place of the original rear return; the scheme was agreed and approved around 1995.