71 University Road (Fitzwilliam Place), Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT7 1NF

71 University Road (Fitzwilliam Place), Belfast

This is a relatively plain, two-storey gabled terraced house, built around 1846–48, forming the northernmost of a terrace of three known as Fitzwilliam Place. The terrace is mildly Neo-Classical in character and somewhat squat in its proportions. It sits on the west side of University Road, abutting the Queen's University Students' Union at an angle to the south, and roughly facing Charles Lanyon's original Queen's College building of 1845–49. To the north lies Fitzwilliam Street. All three properties in the terrace share a garden to the front, which gives the block a slight country cottage air. The listing covers the main building but excludes the rear return.

The symmetrical front façade faces east. At ground floor centre is the main entrance, comprising a panelled timber door with a plain rectangular fanlight, framed by panelled pilasters with decorative brackets supporting a cornice hood, the edges of which appear to be enclosed in timber. To either side of the entrance is a fairly large window with a plain sash frame, simple moulded surround, and a relatively slim cill. At first floor level there are three similar windows, all smaller than those on the ground floor; the two outer windows are broader and squatter than the central one. The full height of the façade is defined by panelled outer pilasters, a deep eaves course, and a gutter course.

The north gable is blank, with a pilaster to its left-hand (east) edge matching those on the front. On the west side of the gable, a high rendered wall extends until it abuts the left-hand edge of the front façade of No. 2 Fitzwilliam Street. This wall contains a doorway with a plain sheeted timber door and simple moulded surround.

The rear of the building has a single-storey gabled return extending from the right at ground floor level. This return was rebuilt on a larger scale in around 1990–91, replacing an earlier and smaller original version. The north face of the return has a panelled and glazed door at the far left, followed by a window with a modern frame made to resemble a sash with Georgian panes, and then a larger window also with a modern frame. The south face of the return has two windows similar to the one at the left on the north face. At the far right of the north face is a lean-to linking corridor, which backs into the main rear façade of Nos. 71 and 73 and connects to the return of No. 73. The west gable of the return abuts the gable of No. 2 Fitzwilliam Street.

The main rear façade has a sash window with Georgian panes (six over six) to the left at ground floor level, and similar but slightly smaller sash windows to the left and right at first floor level. Near the eaves at the centre is a squat window with a fixed light frame. The entire façade is finished in plain render and painted.

The main roof is gabled and covered in natural slate. There are three Velux windows to the rear slope and a rendered parapet to the north gable. Two rendered chimney stacks sit on the ridge, one to the north and one to the south, both with octagonal pots. Rainwater goods are metal, believed to be a combination of cast iron and aluminium.

Historical background

What is now University Road began as the original route from Belfast to Lisburn and onward to Dublin. It was superseded in 1817 by the newly cut Lisburn Road a short distance to the west, but the opening of Queen's College in 1845 and the growing movement of Belfast's merchant and professional classes toward the suburbs brought substantial development to the area from the mid-19th century onwards. Fitzwilliam Place was a small part of this growth.

The land had been leased from the Donegall estate since 1711 by the ancestors of a John Alexander, who renewed his title in 1823. In 1849 Alexander leased part of the land to William Magill Collins, a solicitor with offices in Arthur Street. In 1866, following the large-scale sale of the Donegall Estate, Collins obtained full freehold title. He had already built the present terrace, probably around 1846–48, in common with many other terraces then springing up around the newly built Queen's College, and designed to attract Belfast's professional and merchant classes. His earliest tenants were clergymen, merchants, manufacturers, and fellow solicitors; Collins himself lived in one of the houses for a time. Later directories record subsequent tenants and owners of similar backgrounds well into the mid-20th century, including wine merchants, accountants, doctors, clergymen, company directors, and academics connected with Queen's.

William Magill Collins died in 1880 and the properties passed to his daughters and their descendants. By 1962 all three houses had been conveyed to Queen's University, which appears initially to have rented them to university staff. By the mid-1960s, with the expansion of Queen's academic scope, the properties were converted to faculty office use.

No. 71 specifically was among the earliest — and possibly the first — tenants a linen merchant named Hugh McClelland, who remained until around 1863. He was followed by a Reverend James Collins, and then from 1870 to 1899 by Benjamin Haughton, a merchant. Hugh A. Ross, listed as being of the Durham Street Weaving Factory, came next, followed around 1903 by Frederick Wheeler, a mineral water manufacturer. The Wheeler family remained at No. 71 for the next three decades, purchasing the house in 1929 and selling it to Queen's University in November 1931. Queen's initially rented the property to an F. A. MacLaughlin, who was followed by R. P. Smyth, a medical doctor. During the Second World War the property was placed at the disposal of the government, but afterwards returned to domestic use, serving for a time as the home of G. O. Sayles, the medieval historian, and later of a Professor Graham Bull. By the mid-1960s it ceased to be a residence and became offices for the Faculties of Arts, Sciences and Economics, and in more recent times for the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. The building was extensively renovated around 1990–91, at which point the rear return was rebuilt on a larger scale.