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

No. 20 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced house built around 1896–1898 by the landowner John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, located on the west side of McMaster Street in the Ballymacarrett area of East Belfast. It forms part of a complete, intact street of late Victorian terraced housing and carries group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and a red brick chimney stack at the south side. Rainwater goods are ogee profile cast-iron, painted, supported on projecting polychromatic brick eaves on an ovolo moulded corbel course. The walls are English garden-wall bonded red brick, laid with alternating courses of headers and stretchers, incorporating two polychromatic brick string courses including a continuous brick and sill course at first floor level. Window openings and the entrance door are contained within camber headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and projecting masonry sills.

The principal (west) elevation has an entrance door at the left, accessed via a concrete threshold, flanked by a window to the right, with two windows at first floor level offset slightly to the right. The north gable abuts No. 18 McMaster Street and the south gable abuts No. 22 McMaster Street.

By the time of the updated survey in 2013, all windows on the front elevation had been replaced, including a new timber panelled door with a camber headed transom light. Paint had been removed from all brickwork including the plinth, brick chamfered reveals, and camber headed window reveals. The current windows are replacement 1-over-1 timber sliding sashes.

The rear (east) elevation 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 north-south entry running between the back yards of Lendrick Street and McMaster Street.

SETTING

The house sits at the north end of the eastern two-storey terrace block, facing directly onto McMaster Street. The wide street, formerly cobbled, is now largely concrete with small cobbled areas at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs, original lamp posts, and electric lighting (formerly gas). Original tiled street signage is present at the north and south ends of the street. The street narrows towards Major Street to the south.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

No. 20 McMaster Street first appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of Belfast dated 1920–21, confirming that both terraces of the street had been completed by that time. Belfast Street Directories establish that while the western terrace (Nos. 1–37) and Nos. 6–14 on the eastern side were built in 1898 and 1899, the remainder of the eastern terrace (Nos. 16–52, including No. 20) was not completed until 1908. The street was therefore built in two phases, roughly a decade apart.

The land on which the street stands was wedge-shaped, meaning the terraces became progressively narrower, with smaller gardens, as construction extended towards the far end of the street.

The Annual Revisions identify the first occupant of No. 20 as a Mr Henry Cousins, who came into possession in the year the terrace was completed (1908), when the house was valued at £8 and owned by John McMaster. The 1911 Census records Cousins as employed as a clerk with the Belfast Harbour Board, and describes No. 20 as a second-class dwelling comprising seven rooms. Cousins remained in residence until at least 1918. By 1930, the house was occupied by Mr Samuel Dunlop, employed at the nearby shipyards as a plater. The rateable value of the property remained at £8 through to 1930, rising to £11 by the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935.

During the Second World War, McMaster Street escaped damage in the 1941 Belfast Blitz, when the Luftwaffe targeted the nearby Harland and Wolff shipyards, causing 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), and the value of No. 20 had risen to £12, where it remained through to the end of that revaluation period in 1972. Samuel Dunlop continued to live at No. 20 until his death in 1962, after which his widow Ellen Dunlop came into possession. By 1980 a Mr William R. Dunlop, a driver, was recorded as occupant.

The street's architect, John Frazer and Sons, was active between the 1890s and the second decade of the twentieth century, and also designed a number of other terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street (built 1899) and Meadowbank Place, which are similar in character and design to McMaster Street.

The parlour houses on McMaster Street were built to new housing and planning regulations specifically intended to improve living standards for working-class people in Belfast. The terraces were among the first late Victorian industrial housing in Belfast to be supplied with running water and flushable toilets, made possible by a new city drainage system, and gas piping was introduced to each house for lighting. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s. These improvements set McMaster Street apart from the more unsanitary working-class housing typical of early Victorian Belfast.

The proximity to the Harland and Wolff shipyards and the ropework factories — the principal employers in the area — is reflected in the occupational histories of the street's residents, a number of whom worked at those industries.

During the 1970s the Ballymacarrett area underwent extensive redevelopment, with many comparable red brick terraces demolished. McMaster Street survived as an intact remnant of late Victorian working-class housing. No. 20 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 Victorian street.