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

No. 36 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay terraced house built around 1898 as part of a late Victorian terrace on the east side of McMaster Street, East Belfast, in the Ballymacarrett area. It was built by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, and forms part of a complete and largely intact street of late Victorian terraced housing that survived both the German Blitz of 1941 and the widespread demolition of similar redbrick terraces in the Ballymacarrett area during the 1970s redevelopments. The house shares 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 on the south side. Painted ogee-profile cast-iron rainwater goods are supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course sitting on an ovolo-moulded corbel course. The walls are built in English garden-wall bond — red brick laid in alternating courses of headers and stretchers — with two polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick and sill course at first floor level. Windows are replacement square-headed timber casements, and the door is a replacement timber panelled door with a square-headed transom light above. Both windows and door are set within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and rest on projecting masonry sills.

The principal (west) elevation facing McMaster Street has the entrance door to the left, accessed via a concrete threshold and flanked by a window to the right. At first floor level there are two windows, offset slightly to the right. The north gable abuts No. 34 McMaster Street. The rear (south) elevation was not fully accessible at the time of survey; a two-storey extension with a pitched roof appears to abut the house to the right. Access to the enclosed rear yard is from the entry via a timber-sheeted entrance door to the east, contained within high-level brick walling on all sides. The south gable abuts No. 38 McMaster Street.

SETTING

The house sits in the middle of the eastern two-storey terrace block, facing 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 lights). Original tiled street signage is present at the north and south ends of the street. The rear 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 entry running north to south between the back yards of Lendrick Street and McMaster Street. The street narrows towards Major Street to the south.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

No. 36 McMaster Street first appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of Belfast, dated 1920–21, by which time both terraces of the street had been completed. Belfast Street Directories confirm that while the western terrace (nos 1–37) and nos 6–14 on the eastern side were constructed in 1898 and 1899, the remainder of the eastern terrace (nos 16–52, including No. 36) was not built until 1908 — a decade after construction of the street began.

The land on which the street was built was originally owned by John McMaster, who also owned the land on the south side of the Newtownards Road on which the street was laid out. The land was wedge-shaped, which meant the terraces became progressively narrower and the gardens progressively smaller towards the far end of the street; as a result, No. 36 has a considerably smaller yard than the houses at the top of the terrace.

The Department of the Environment Conservation Area plan records that McMaster Street was designed by John Frazer and Sons. Frazer was active between the 1890s and the second decade of the twentieth century and designed a number of other terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place, which are similar in design to McMaster Street. Chadwick Street was built in 1899, when the first phase of McMaster Street's construction had just finished.

The parlour houses on McMaster Street were built to new housing and planning regulations intended to improve the standard of living for working-class people in Belfast. The terraces were among the first late Victorian industrial houses in Belfast to be supplied with running water and flushable toilets, made possible by the construction of a new city drainage system. Gas piping to each house for lighting was also a new practice at the time and, together with improved sanitary facilities, set McMaster Street apart from the more squalid housing typical of Belfast during the early Victorian period. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s.

The street was built close to the Harland and Wolff shipyards and ropework factories, which were the principal employers in the area. Annual Revisions record that the first occupant of No. 36 was a Mr Thomas MacNeice, who came into possession of the house in 1908, the year the eastern terrace was completed. In that year the house was valued at £8 and let by John McMaster. The 1911 Census records that the house had passed to a Mr William Adair, a Presbyterian employed as a joiner in the shipyards. The Census Building Return described the house as a second-class dwelling consisting of seven rooms. By 1918 Adair had vacated the house, which was then occupied by Mr Samuel Campbell, a Brassfinisher, who resided there until his death in 1935 according to Belfast Burial Records. By the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930 the value of No. 36 remained at £8; however, by the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 it had risen to £11.

McMaster Street escaped damage during the 1941 Belfast Blitz, when the Luftwaffe raided the shipyards and caused widespread destruction to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road. Following the war, the Second General Revaluation of Northern Ireland recorded that ownership of the street had passed from John McMaster to an L. McMaster (an unknown relative). By that time Samuel Campbell had died at Belfast Mental Hospital at the age of 40, and his widow, Mrs J. R. Campbell, was recorded as the occupant of No. 36. The value of the house was increased to £12 during this revaluation period and remained at that figure until the end of the revaluation in 1972. Mrs J. R. Campbell continued to reside at the address until the 1970s.

During the 1970s the Ballymacarrett area was extensively redeveloped and many redbrick terraces similar to McMaster Street were demolished. The preservation of McMaster Street as an intact remnant of late Victorian working-class housing was consequently considered important, and in 1987 No. 36 was listed along with the rest of the terrace. In 1994 the neighbourhood was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment, with criteria put in place to ensure that additions to the terrace remained in keeping with the original design and fabric of the street. A sympathetic two-storey redbrick return was added to the rear of the house around 2000.