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

23 Malone Place is a two-storey, two-bay Victorian mid-terrace dwelling built around 1860, forming part of the latter half of a terrace located off the Lisburn Road, adjacent to Sandy Row, approximately one mile south of Belfast city centre. It is of square plan with a two-storey rear return. The building remains in use as a domestic dwelling and is in private ownership.

EXTERIOR

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged. At ground floor level there is a door to the left with a single window to the right, and two windows at first floor level. The roof is pitched with natural slate and clay ridge tiles, with a red-brick chimney and clay pots. Rainwater goods are replacement galvanised metal. The walls are red brick laid in Flemish bond, with a projected smooth rendered plinth course and yellow-brick eaves courses. Windows are 1-over-1 timber sliding sash with horns, painted masonry cills, and yellow-brick flat arches. The entrance has a replacement timber door with overlight, replacement surrounds, and a canopy. The left gable abuts number 25 Malone Place, and the right gable abuts number 21.

The rear elevation is asymmetrically arranged and rendered, with the ground floor obscured from view. There is a first-floor window to the right. The left bay is abutted by a replacement red-brick two-storey return with lower eaves and ridge levels than the main building.

Although some historic features of interest were lost following a refurbishment of the terrace around 2000, the exterior has retained its general character. The overall intact appearance of the terrace makes it a good surviving example of housing of this type, and number 23 adds significant value to the group as a whole, making a positive architectural contribution to the character of the area.

SETTING

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

HISTORY

The terrace was built in at least two phases. The earlier part dates from the late 1840s, with further houses added in the early 1860s. The site, at the bottom of Sandy Row, lay well outside the urban area of Belfast until the 1850s. Sandy Row itself probably follows a route of medieval origin. On the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–33, a small structure is shown on the site, perhaps associated with the Malone turnpike situated at this junction, but the surrounding area is otherwise little developed, consisting mostly of housing along the major routes into Belfast. Industrial activity gradually spread westwards, and by the time the terrace was built the area comprised a mixed-use landscape of factories, brick fields, housing, some larger mansions, and considerable open ground. The most prominent structure in the area was the Union Workhouse and Fever Hospital, dating from 1841 and 1849 respectively, and several inhabitants of Malone Place were at various times employed there.

The site had belonged from 1798 to a gentleman named William Irvine. In 1826 it was purchased, together with the neighbouring plot, by Arthur Gaffikin, a butcher and property developer who later became a linen merchant. Gaffikin is commemorated in the name of Gaffikin Street, which runs to the rear of Malone Place. The terrace does not appear in the street directory of 1846–47 but is present in the 1850 edition, suggesting a likely construction date of the late 1840s for numbers 9 to 19. The terrace was built to the rear of 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 Arthur Gaffikin and subsequently sold on, or that he sold the land as building plots.

In Griffith's Valuation of 1860, Sarah Warnock is listed as landlady, with the houses valued at £10. An advertisement in the Belfast Newsletter of 1857 described them 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, including the present building, were built between 1860 and 1863 by property developer Moses Tate. These were initially valued slightly higher than the first phase of houses — at £11, with number 29 at £12 — though these valuations were later reduced in 1888 to £10 and £11 respectively. The Belfast Newsletter of 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 offered by Arthur Gaffikin, and four slightly larger houses were subsequently 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 considered to have fallen into disrepute; in time the home also catered for unmarried mothers and became a maternity hospital. The four dwellings were demolished in 1924 and a new Rescue and Maternity Home was built on the site to designs by William Godfrey Ferguson. In 1973, Malone Place Hospital was absorbed by the Jubilee Maternity Hospital, though it ceased to be used for maternity services after 1981 and has since remained the property of the Health Trust.

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

The houses appear to have been home to people of varying social standing, mostly from the skilled manual, clerical, and supervisory classes. A large number of residents were employed in the textile industry in some form — in the manufacture of cloth or as drapers, tailors, or in other ancillary trades. The Belfast Newsletter records occasional hints of the rougher side of Victorian city life in connection with the terrace: in 1867, Jane Crosbey of number 17 was summonsed on a charge of disorderly conduct in the public street, with magistrates receiving information "as to the character of the house she kept." In October and November 1876, a story ran over several weeks in the Newsletter when a boarder at number 23 was accused of stealing a top coat, umbrella, watch, chain, and £1 10s from a man staying the night in the dwelling. The case culminated in a courtroom speech by the defendant followed by an angry riposte from his wife — the attention devoted to this story suggesting how rare such a crime was in mid-Victorian Belfast. By the time the 1901 and 1911 censuses give a fuller picture of the terrace's inhabitants, most houses were occupied by large extended families of the respectable skilled working class, rarely able to afford a servant, with teenage children often contributing a wage to the household.

The houses were frequently renumbered during the latter decades of the 19th century, making it difficult at times to identify the residents of individual properties with certainty. As far as can be determined, number 23 was newly built and vacant in 1860. The first recorded occupier was Hugh McAuley of McAuley and McCashin, spirit merchants of Arthur Street, in 1863–64. Subsequent residents include Robert Hendrey of Bank Buildings (1865) and William Hatton, an ironmonger's assistant (1870). From 1876 the tenant was Samuel Walker, carpenter, recorded as a cabinetmaker by 1884. Mary Campbell is listed as resident from 1895, and the 1901 and 1911 censuses record her living with her brother Alexander, a watchmaker. Mary Campbell continued to be recorded as resident in 1918.