48 Sunnyside St., Belfast

48 Sunnyside Street is a two-storey red-brick terrace house built in 1909, located approximately 3 km from Belfast city centre on the South side of Sunnyside Street, a busy thoroughfare connecting the Ormeau Road with Annadale Embankment. It forms part of a longer terrace of twenty-one similar dwellings arranged on the South side of the street.

The house is rectangular on plan with a two-storey rectangular return extension to the rear, which has a flat roof. The walls are constructed of smooth red clay brick laid in English Garden Wall bond, with clay ventilation bricks at each level. The natural slate roof is supported by a projecting moulded brick course at eaves level, which carries cast metal ogee guttering. A replacement red-brick chimney stack on the right-hand side has a projecting concrete coping and clay pots.

The front elevation faces North. It features a painted timber four-panel door with plain glazing overlight to the left, with a semi-circular head and moulded architrave. To the right is a painted timber 2/2 sliding-sash window with a segmental head and moulded architrave. A smaller similar window is positioned almost centrally on the first floor. A small front garden finished in concrete block paviors is set behind a replacement red-brick boundary wall with a square-headed doorway containing a six-panelled painted timber door, gateway with painted metal railings and a small painted metal arched gate. This boundary treatment was installed around 1988 as part of an improvement scheme encompassing the whole terrace.

The rear elevation faces South. At first floor level the main house has a uPVC top-hung window to the left. A two-storey extension was added to the right, built in rustic red-clay brick with a flat roof and painted timber boards to the eaves. This extension has a uPVC top-hung casement window at first floor level facing South, with uPVC rainwater goods and soil stack. The extension extends almost to the original yard wall and has a single-storey section to the left in the same materials. On the ground floor there is a fully glazed painted timber door to the left and a large uPVC picture window to the right. The extension appears to date to around the 1990s. Rainwater goods comprise cast metal to the front and uPVC to the rear. A narrow laneway runs to the rear of the yard wall, shared with numbers 44 to 52, bounded to the South with a corrugated tin fence enclosing an industrial yard. A large group of red-brick single and two-storey industrial outbuildings stands South of this industrial yard.

The side elevations abut the adjacent terraced properties: the East side adjoins number 46 Sunnyside Street, and the West side adjoins number 50 Sunnyside Street.

Despite replacement of the original front boundary and the addition of the rear extension, the building retains its external character including panelled timber front door, sliding sash windows to the front, stucco surrounds and slate roof. It has significant group value as part of the larger terrace. The building is 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.

According to the 1911 census, the building was recorded as a second-class dwelling containing five rooms, occupied by Robert James McVeigh, a carpenter, his wife Harriett, their four children and two lodgers, Mary Jane and William Reynold Purvis. The first occupant appears to have been William Whyte, an insurance agent. The McVeigh family remained in residence until the 1960s, followed by Roy Johnston (bread salesman) in 1970 and 1980, with Aine McGabhann the occupant in 1995.

The terrace of which this house forms part was developed in stages. Numbers 14 to 24 are shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1903 and were recorded in the valuation book that year. Numbers 26 to 42 were entered into the same book in 1904. Numbers 44 to 52, including number 48, were first referred to in the succeeding valuation book in 1910. The developer of numbers 14 to 42 was Hugh Scott, listed as lessor for these properties in 1906. John McBride is noted as lessor for numbers 44 to 52 in 1910. The identity of the architect is not known. The property was listed in 1986.