4 College Green, Belfast

4 College Green is a two-storey-with-attic red brick terraced house, built in 1870–71 to designs by Belfast architect James Francis MacKinnon. It faces south onto College Green, to the north-east of the main quadrangle at Queen's University, Belfast, and forms part of a longer Victorian terrace overlooking the Theological College of the Presbyterian Church within the Queen's Conservation Area.

The house carries strong group value with its immediate neighbours: No. 2 College Green and College Green House (originally Culfeightrin House). All three were designed together by MacKinnon for Archibald McCollum, a general broker and commission agent of Skipper Street, client and architect possibly sharing north Antrim connections. A tender notice was issued in mid-July 1870 and all three dwellings were completed the following year. They originally shared a coach house, harness room and stables to the rear, now converted to a restaurant known as Molly's Yard.

College Green was laid out in 1866 on what was then the semi-rural Plains of Malone, the land east of the recently established Queen's College (completed 1849) and around and beyond the Union Theological College (completed 1853). The founding of Queen's prompted several decades of development in the area, with regularly planned streets filled with mainly High Victorian terraced housing for the professional and merchant classes moving southward from a rapidly commercialising and industrialising Belfast city centre. The present Nos. 6–8 were the first to be built along the new thoroughfare in 1866, with Nos. 2–4, College Green House, and Nos. 24–26 following in 1870–71, then Nos. 10–12 and 20–22 in 1876, and Nos. 14–18 in 1878. The street was originally conceived as part of Fitzroy Avenue, with the name "College Green" applied only to Culfeightrin House and Nos. 2–8 on the 1871–73 Ordnance Survey map. Culfeightrin House, originally occupied by McCollum himself, was destroyed by fire in January 1882 and left, according to newspaper reports at the time, a blackened ruin. It was subsequently rebuilt, apparently using at least part of the original shell, though possibly with an altered internal layout.

The original occupant of No. 4 was David Kemp. Before 1877, J. M. Shaw, a provision merchant, was in residence, followed before 1880 by W. Jenkins, a linen merchant, who was in turn succeeded by Robert H. Allen of D. & J. Allen, printers, Corporation Street. Miss Maria R. Fleming is recorded from 1896–97, and in the 1901 and 1911 censuses she was living there with her sister Harriett and a domestic servant; the house was described as a first-class dwelling with nine rooms in use in 1901 and fourteen in 1911. By at least 1918, M. Bullick, a painting contractor, had acquired the property, and his family remained there until the late 1980s.

College Green runs east–west from Botanic Avenue to Rugby Road, and Nos. 2 and 4 are located near the western end.

EXTERIOR

The roof is natural slate, duo-pitched with black clay ridge tiles, including to the rear return. The ground-floor bay to the front has a hipped roof. There are gabled dormers to the front (south) elevation. The rear pitch has a wide dormer with a PVC membrane-covered flat roof. First survey photographs show this rear dormer originally had a flat roof with a metal Crittal-style window. A modern rooflight serves the rear return. There are two rectangular red brick chimneys, both centred on the ridge: one shared with No. 2, corbelled with engineering brick specials and six octagonal yellow clay pots; the other rebuilt in red brick with a simple projecting brick coping and abutting the chimney at No. 6 College Green along the party wall. Rainwater goods to the south are cast-iron ogee-profile gutters and circular-section downpipes, shared with No. 2; those to the north are uPVC.

South elevation (principal façade) The south elevation is asymmetrical, with the entrance to the left and a single-storey canted bay to the right at ground floor. At first floor there are three segmental arched windows: one centred above the door and two paired above the canted bay. The walling is red brick in Flemish bond.

The eaves are heavy and overhanging, carried on scrolled corbel brackets with incised carving to their side faces. Twin gabled dormers rise to the attic, each containing a pair of top-hung casement windows with faux horns; each dormer has a decorative projecting bargeboard with a spike finial, exposed rafter tails at the eaves, and a gable clad in diagonal painted timber sheeting above the windows with side cheeks clad in slate. The bargeboard has a round-arched lower edge with Norman-style moulding and trefoil carving to the spandrel above. The western dormer is not original, having been added at some point after approximately 1900; the eastern dormer, originally smaller, was presumably replaced at the same time, their styling suggesting this occurred shortly after 1900.

The entrance is contained within a gabled projection with stone copings and a finial, supported by Corinthian-style columns on a substantial stone plinth. Incised rosettes depicting flower heads appear below the apex and at the eaves to the gable. The door itself is a wide, flat-arched timber-framed four-panelled door with raised and fielded panels and bolection moulding; a central vertical bead creates the impression of double doors. The fittings include a brass letterbox and octagonal door handle, likely original, and a plain glass fanlight with the numeral 4 applied. Above the columns is a Norman-style arched opening, and the arched door surround has a roll-edged detail.

The canted bay is entirely rendered in stucco above cill height, with foliated stone capitals to the pilasters between windows and a continuous deep cornice of wide leaf mouldings to the parapet. Other painted dressings, likely a combination of stone and stucco, include a projecting base plinth with chamfered top; a continuous ground-floor window cill set flush with the walling; a platband and projecting moulded string course at cill height to the first-floor windows; a similar moulding at impost level continuing as a hood above the deep surround to the segmental arched heads; and the same moulding repeated again at attic level, lining the base of the corbel brackets described above. An incised rosette appears between the paired first-floor window heads. Below the string course, the jamb reveals feature stop-chamfered brick. Windows to the south elevation are single-glazed double-hung timber-framed sliding sashes with 1-over-1 panes.

North elevation (rear) The rear elevation faces north and overlooks a small alley shared by Nos. 2 and 4 College Green and College Green House. The alley is accessed from College Green Mews and is overlooked on the opposite side by the former gabled stable block, now Molly's Yard restaurant. The walling is brownish-red brick in English Garden Wall bond, painted up to first-floor cill height at the return, with two courses of projecting brick forming the eaves.

A two-storey gabled return projects to the right (west), with a single window at attic half-landing level to the far right, and one window each on the ground and first floors to the left. The first-floor window of the return has been replaced with a single-glazed top-hung timber casement with a precast concrete thin cill. The remaining two windows on this elevation are double-hung timber-framed sliding sashes with 2-over-2 panes and retain thick stone cills. A bricked-up opening above the left side of the return, with precast concrete lintels (painted), is clearly a later alteration. The wide flat-roofed attic dormer spans almost the full width of the rear elevation and contains three single-glazed timber-framed casement windows with painted timber framing between. The gabled end of the return is blank, with roughcast render to the lower half and evidence of a former opening in a remaining brick soldier course at ground floor level, just above the render line. The eaves to the return are clipped.

East elevation No. 6 College Green abuts the main building on the east. The east face of the two-storey return is informally arranged, with two windows and a timber-framed glazed door at ground floor, and two windows at first floor. Walling is rendered up to first-floor cill height, with a single row of projecting brick headers at the eaves. All windows here have been replaced with single-glazed timber-framed casements. The proportions of the openings have also been altered, with notable patches of brick infill and thin precast concrete cills.

West elevation No. 2 College Green abuts the main building on the west. The west face of the two-storey return is largely blank where visible, detailed similarly to the east face and painted.

BOUNDARY FEATURES AND SETTING

The house is set back from College Green behind low red brick dwarf boundary walling with chamfered stone coping (stone tooling marks visible through the paint finish). Substantial square-on-plan red brick gate pillars have a projecting base plinth, stop-chamfered corner edges, and a flush stone cap with a square-based pyramidal top; the brick is textured in contrast to the pillars at No. 2, suggesting they may have been rebuilt. The same pillar type appears at the far end of the dwarf wall at the boundary with No. 6 College Green. The railings and gate are replacement galvanised steel, painted. The gate opens onto a path and small front garden of precast concrete paving flags, with two bull-nosed stone steps to the entrance door. A galvanised steel grille sits above a small square lightwell; the basement walls below are a mix of unfinished concrete block and red brick.

To the rear, the yard boundary retains brownish-red variegated brick walling with cambered terracotta coping to the north side. A ledged and braced sheeted timber gate (a replacement) leads to the shared alley. The yard surface is brushed concrete with two concrete steps to the back door. The former stable block on the opposite side of the alley is aligned parallel to Nos. 2 and 4, is contemporary with both these buildings and College Green House, and was originally shared between all three.

INTERIOR

Most of the plan form survives intact, along with some interior detailing.