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

52 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian end-of-terrace house, built around 1898 on the east side of McMaster Street in East Belfast. It was developed by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, and forms the southern end of an intact terrace that has survived both the German Blitz of 1941 and the widespread demolition of similar streets during the 1970s redevelopment of the Ballymacarrett area. The house shares group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street and is of local historical and architectural interest.

Architectural Description

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and a red brick chimney stack on the south side. Rainwater goods are painted ogee-profile cast iron, supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course over an ovolo-moulded corbel course. The walls are laid in English garden-wall bond — alternating courses of headers and stretchers in red brick — with two polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick-and-sill course at first-floor level. The south gable and east elevation are finished in painted smooth render. Window openings have camber heads with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and projecting masonry sills. The windows are currently boarded and the door is a replacement timber panelled door with a square-headed transom light.

The principal (west) elevation faces McMaster Street. At ground floor, the entrance door is set to the left and is accessed via a tiled threshold; to its right is a di-partite window. Two windows are set at first-floor level. The north gable is abutted by No. 50 McMaster Street. The rear (south) elevation was partially visible at the time of survey: it is abutted on the right by a two-storey extension with a lean-to roof, and the exposed section to the left has a single window at each floor level. The extension's south elevation ground floor was not visible; the first floor has a single window. The east gable and north elevation of the extension are blank. Access to the enclosed rear yard is from the entry via a timber-sheeted entrance door at the east, set within high-level brick walling on all sides. The south gable is blank.

Windows are replacement one-over-one timber sliding sashes.

Setting

The house sits at the southern end of the east terrace block, facing directly onto McMaster Street. The street, formerly cobbled, is now largely laid in concrete with small areas of remaining cobbles at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs. Original lamp posts with electric lighting survive — these were originally gas lights — and original tiled street signage remains 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 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. Because John McMaster's land was wedge-shaped, the plots become progressively narrower and the gardens progressively smaller towards the southern end of the terrace; as one of the southernmost houses, No. 52 therefore has one of the smallest plots on the street.

Historical Background

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

Annual Revision records show that the first recorded occupant of No. 52 was a Robert Gill, who came into possession of the house in 1910. The property was valued at £9 and was let by John McMaster, who owned the wedge-shaped parcel of land on the south side of the Newtownards Road on which the street was constructed. The 1911 Census records Gill as a joiner employed at the nearby shipyards, working alongside his son who was a driller. The Census Building Return of 1911 described No. 52 as a second-class dwelling consisting of seven rooms. Gill left the property between 1911 and 1918, when a Mr. J. McMillen, a tailor, took up residence and continued to live there until the 1950s. By the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930 the rateable value remained at £9, rising to £13 at the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935.

McMaster Street escaped the destruction of the 1941 Belfast Blitz, during which the Luftwaffe raided the nearby Harland and Wolff shipyards and caused significant damage to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road. Following the war, the Second General Revaluation recorded that ownership of the street had passed from John McMaster to one L. McMaster, whose relationship to the original developer is not known. By 1956 the rateable value of No. 52 had risen to £14, where it remained until the revaluation ended in 1972. J. McMillen had vacated by 1950, when Samuel Wells was recorded in possession; Wells left before 1960, when Albert Naylor occupied the house, and a member of the Naylor family continued to live there until the 1990s.

The architect J. Frazer and Son — active from the 1890s into the second decade of the 20th century — also designed a number of other terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street (built 1899) and Meadowbank Place, both of which are similar in design to McMaster Street.

The houses on McMaster Street were built as parlour houses under new housing and planning regulations designed to improve living standards for working-class people in Belfast. The terrace was among the first late Victorian industrial housing in Belfast to be supplied with running water and flushable toilets, made possible by the construction of a new city drainage system. Gas was also piped into each house to provide lighting — a new practice at the time — which, together with the improved sanitary provision, distinguished McMaster Street from the more squalid early Victorian housing typical of Belfast at the period. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s.

During the 1970s, the Ballymacarrett area was extensively redeveloped and many comparable red-brick terraces were demolished. McMaster Street survived as an intact example of late Victorian working-class housing, and in 1987 No. 52 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 established to ensure that any future additions to the terrace are in keeping with the original design and materials of the street.