52 Sunnyside St., Belfast

52 Sunnyside Street is a two-storey red-brick terrace house built in 1909, located on Sunnyside Street approximately 3 kilometres south of Belfast city centre. The street itself developed gradually from a lane marked on the 1871-73 Ordnance Survey town plan, with the first terrace of six houses (the original "Sunnyside") appearing on the north side. Sunnyside Street was properly established by the 1870s-1880s, and significant residential development occurred in the early twentieth century. No. 52 forms part of a longer terrace of twenty-one dwellings on the south side of the street. Numbers 14-24 were recorded by 1903, numbers 26-42 in 1904, and numbers 44-52 in 1910, suggesting the house was completed by 1909-1910. The developer of numbers 44-52 was John McBride, though the architect remains unknown.

The house is rectangular on plan with a two-storey rectangular return wing featuring a double-pitched roof. The walls are constructed of smooth red clay brick laid in English Garden Wall bond, with clay ventilation bricks at each level. The roof is natural slate with a replacement red-brick chimney stack on the right-hand side, topped with clay pots and a projecting brick course. Cast metal ogee guttering is supported by a projecting moulded brick course at eaves level.

The front elevation (facing north) displays the house's original early twentieth-century character. A painted timber four-panel door with plain glazing overlight sits to the left, surmounted by a semi-circular head with moulded architrave. To the right is a painted timber 2/2 sliding-sash window with a segmental head and moulded architrave, the same pattern repeated (though smaller) almost centrally on the first floor. The front garden is finished in concrete with a red and yellow quarry tile pathway leading to the door, set behind a plain red-brick boundary wall with canted coping and a twentieth-century painted metal gate.

The rear elevation (facing south) of the main house is rendered in smooth cement plaster and contains painted timber top-hung casement windows to the left-hand side on each level. A two-storey extension extends to the right, built circa 1990s with rustic red clay brick and a double-pitched roof with fibre-cement covering. The extension has painted timber boards to verges and eaves, painted timber casement windows at each level, and uPVC rainwater goods. A square-headed yard doorway with a concrete head and brick header course provides access via a varnished timber boarded door. The rear is bounded to the south by a communal laneway shared with Whitehall Gardens, a narrow laneway shared with numbers 44-52, beyond which a corrugated tin fence encloses an industrial yard. Large groups of red-brick single and two-storey industrial outbuildings stand south of this yard.

The side elevations abut numbers 50 (east) and 54 (west) Sunnyside Street respectively.

The property has undergone modifications over time. The original front boundary has been replaced, and a new-build two-storey extension was added to the rear (circa 1990s). The current owner (who purchased the house around 2012) reported replacing late twentieth-century hollow core doors with four-panelled solid pine doors. Despite these alterations, the building retains significant external character, including the panelled timber front door, original sliding sash windows, stucco surrounds, and slate roof, making it one of the few houses in the terrace to retain its original early twentieth-century front windows.

The house represents a good example of modest Edwardian urban terraced housing, built during a period of rapid expansion of Belfast southwards from the city centre along the main thoroughfares of the Ormeau, Lisburn and Malone Roads. The property possesses significant group value within the larger terrace. Sunnyside Street itself became a thoroughfare following the opening of King's Bridge in 1912, allowing the street to connect directly through to Ridgeway Street on the far side of the River Lagan.

The 1911 census records the building as a second-class dwelling with five rooms, occupied by Trevor McConnell (a bricklayer), his wife Lizzie, and their three daughters. Subsequent occupants included John Kinghan (painter, 1918 and 1945), J. Finlay (1932), Thomas Patterson (tailor, 1935), Miss H. Francy (1943), W. S. Middleton (baker, 1951), A. E. Amery (1960), Mary Osborne (1970), and S. Donnegan (1980). The property was listed in 1986.