9 Malone Place, Belfast, County Antrim, BT12 5FD

9 Malone Place is a two-storey, two-bay Victorian mid-terrace dwelling built around 1850, situated off the Lisburn Road adjacent to Sandy Row, approximately one mile south of Belfast city centre. It forms part of an original terrace and, while some historic features were lost during a refurbishment of the terrace around 2000, the house has retained its general external character and contributes significantly to the group as a whole.

The building has a square plan with a two-storey rear return. The roof is pitched and clad in natural slate with clay ridge tiles, replacement galvanised steel rainwater goods, and a red-brick chimney. The walls are of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with a replacement projected smooth rendered plinth-course and a corbelled eaves course. Windows are 1-over-1 timber sliding sash with horns, painted masonry cills, and flat arches. The entrance comprises a replacement timber panelled door with a fixed rectangular overlight, flanked by replacement surrounds and a canopy.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged: at ground floor level there is a door to the left and a single window to the right, with two windows on the first floor above. The left gable abuts number 11 Malone Place, and the right gable abuts number 7. The rear elevation is also asymmetrically arranged, though the view is largely obscured. The right bay is abutted by a replacement, subservient red-brick two-storey rear return.

The terrace faces directly onto a narrow street. Opposite is a rubble masonry wall bounding a railway embankment, alongside a small park enclosed by gated railings. On the far side of the Lisburn Road stands the University Road Moravian Church. The former Maternity Hospital lies to the west and a large modern apartment block to the north.

The terrace was built in at least two phases. The earlier houses, numbers 9 to 19, date from the late 1840s — the terrace does not appear in the street directory of 1846–7 but is recorded in the 1850 edition, and makes its first cartographic appearance on the Hodges and Smith map of 1850. Numbers 21 to 29 were added between 1860 and 1863. The site, at the bottom of Sandy Row, lay well outside the built-up area of Belfast until the 1850s. Sandy Row itself probably follows a route of medieval origin. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–3 shows a small structure on the site, possibly associated with the Malone turnpike at this junction, but the surrounding area was otherwise little developed, consisting mainly of housing along the principal routes into Belfast.

By the time the terrace was built, the area had become a mixed-use landscape of factories, brick fields, housing, larger mansions, and open ground. The most prominent local institution was the Union Workhouse and Fever Hospital, dating from 1841 and 1849 respectively, and several residents of Malone Place were employed there at various times.

According to annotations by Brett on the 1850 Hodges and Smith map, the site had belonged from 1798 to a gentleman named William Irvine, and was purchased in 1826 — along with the neighbouring plot — by Arthur Gaffikin, a butcher and property developer who later became proprietor of a linen business. Gaffikin is commemorated in the name of Gaffikin Street, which runs to the rear of Malone Place. The terrace was built behind a larger house called Malone Cottage, which faces onto Sandy Row (then known as Malone Road). It is possible that Malone Cottage and the terrace were developed together by Gaffikin and then sold on, or that he sold the land as separate building plots.

In Griffith's Valuation of 1860, Sarah Warnock is listed as landlady, with the houses valued at £10 each. An advertisement in the Belfast Newsletter of March 1857 offered the houses to let as "neat, well-finished houses in Malone Place, adjoining the Post Office, containing Parlour, Kitchen, Three Bedrooms with Gas and Water at the greatly reduced rent of £11." Numbers 21 to 29 were built between 1860 and 1863 by property developer Moses Tate, and were initially valued slightly higher — at £11, with number 29 at £12 — though these valuations were later reduced to £10 and £11 in 1888. The Belfast Newsletter of February 1862 noted that "a number of respectable houses have lately been built on the above Ground and others are in progress of erection."

Further building land in the area was subsequently offered by Arthur Gaffikin, and four slightly larger houses were built on the far side of Blondin Street between 1870 and 1877. These were later taken over as the Midnight Mission Rescue Home, a refuge for women described at the time as "fallen," and eventually became a maternity hospital catering for unmarried mothers. The four dwellings were demolished in 1924 and replaced by a new Rescue and Maternity Home designed by William Godfrey Ferguson. In 1973, Malone Place Hospital was absorbed by the Jubilee Maternity Hospital; maternity services ceased there after 1981, though the building remained in the ownership of the Health Trust.

The earliest valuation map to show the terrace, dating from around 1860, depicts ornamental railings and a step to the front of each of the original six houses, with each property having a rear return and outbuildings in the yard. A subsequent edition, dating from between approximately 1860 and 1895, shows a boundary post and watering trough at the junction with the Lisburn Road, and a tramline running behind the terrace along Napier Street — which provided employment for some residents of Malone Place.

The houses were home to people of varying social standing, mostly from the skilled manual, clerical, and supervisory classes. A large proportion of residents worked in the textile industry in some capacity, whether in cloth manufacture or as drapers, tailors, or in related trades. The Belfast Newsletter records occasional glimpses of less respectable episodes: in 1867 Jane Crosbey of number 17 was summonsed for disorderly conduct in a public street, with magistrates receiving information "as to the character of the house she kept." In October and November 1876 the Newsletter ran a story over several weeks concerning a boarder at number 23 who was accused of stealing a top coat, umbrella, watch and chain, and £1 10s from a man staying the night — the case culminating in a courtroom speech by the defendant and an angry riposte from his wife, the sustained attention given to the episode perhaps reflecting how unusual such a crime was in mid-Victorian Belfast. By the time of the 1901 and 1911 censuses, most houses were occupied by large extended families of the respectable skilled working classes, rarely able to afford a servant; where teenage children were present, they were often contributing a wage to the household.

Because the houses in the terrace were frequently renumbered during the latter decades of the 19th century, it is sometimes difficult to identify the residents of individual houses with certainty. As far as can be determined, number 9 was occupied in 1850 by James Parker, followed by Foster Coates, a clerk in the Ulster Railway. Subsequent occupiers included Robert Thompson (1863–5), James McMillen, collector of taxes (1870), James Orr, a clerk who died at the age of 39 (1877), and Foster Archer, a reporter for the Belfast Evening Telegraph (1884). William Kane was resident by 1887 and remained at the house until at least 1902; the 1901 census records him as a flax dresser living with his wife, both from County Tyrone, and a 63-year-old widow from Tyrone lodging with them. From 1907 the occupier was William Oliver, a porter, who lived with his wife, three adult children, and a nephew working respectively as a winder, blacksmith, tailor, and message boy.

The house remains in use as a domestic dwelling.