10 Mount Pleasant, Belfast, BT9 5DS

10 Mount Pleasant is a two-storey detached Victorian house built in 1871, constructed in red clay brick and render beneath a natural slate roof. It sits near the end of a U-shaped cul-de-sac in the Malone and Stranmillis area of south Belfast, adjacent to the listed Summer Hill and facing a listed terrace of nine houses across a private communal garden. The house is L-shaped in plan, comprising a rectangular main block with a two-storey return to the rear. Although the right-hand bay was added within approximately two years of the original construction — a vertical joint in the brickwork immediately to the right of the front door marks the junction — the house reads as a single unified composition. It has retained its original Victorian character both internally and externally and is a fine example of a detached house of this period in this part of Belfast.

MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION

The front elevation is built in red clay brick laid in Flemish bond. The rear elevation and the return are laid in English Garden Wall bond. The two side elevations are finished in painted smooth render. The roof is covered in natural Bangor Blue slate. Rainwater goods are cast iron.

EXTERIOR

The front (south-facing) elevation is symmetrically arranged around a central six-panelled door, the top four panels of which have been replaced with glass. The door has a rectangular overlight and is framed by a painted aedicule with a triangular pediment, which may be stone. Above the door is a 2/2 single-glazed painted timber sliding sash window with horns; two further matching windows sit at first-floor level, with two more to the left of the door at ground floor. To the right is a painted smooth-rendered canted two-storey bay, with three similar 2/2 sash windows on each floor.

The natural slate roof is double-pitched with gables, and a red brick chimney stack with a corbelled top rises from each gable. The eaves project and are supported on paired timber brackets; the verges also project with the purlin ends exposed.

The east side elevation is blind. The west side elevation is largely blind but contains a 2/2 window and, adjacent to it, a glazed door with margin panes and an overlight that is also margin-paned.

The rear (north-facing) elevation has original margin-paned steel double doors with overlights at ground-floor level, and two 2/2 windows above. To the right is a two-storey red brick return with a double-pitched slated roof and a rendered chimney stack on the ridge. The east-facing façade of the return has a modern picture window to the left, a modern glazed door to the right, and an original 2/2 window between them. The gable of the return is blind. The west-facing garden side of the return is aligned with the main house and has a complementary breakfast room extension constructed around 2007, with a fully glazed lantern roof and double doors similar in design to the two sets of double doors in the main house. There are two 2/2 windows at first-floor level in the return and one to the rear elevation of the main house on this side.

A modern double garage with a flat roof has been constructed to the east of the return, connected to it by a flat-roofed link with a timber arched support on one side.

APPROACH AND SETTING

The front door is approached by a short quarry-tiled path with coxcomb terracotta edgings. The small front garden is mainly gravelled with two mature trees, one on either side of the path. A gravelled path runs to the right of the house, with fine cast iron gates at the side that are in keeping with the character of the house, though not original. Along the rear site boundary there is a tall red brick boundary wall in English Garden Wall bond with a rounded terracotta coping and brick piers. The listing covers the house and this rear boundary wall.

The house's interest is enhanced by its secluded setting facing a private garden, its proximity to several other listed buildings, and its small but well-tended side garden.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The origins of Mount Pleasant lie around 1854, when a roughly four-acre plot to the west of what was then known as Friar's Bush Road was acquired by Arthur Alexander, a Belfast coal merchant. The land had previously formed part of the estate of the Blacks of Stranmillis. On the western edge of this plot Alexander built himself a new house, originally called Mountpleasant — now known as Summer Hill — and laid out a long narrow garden to the south with a tree-lined drive and gate lodge to the northeast, where the property bordered the garden of Sandymount.

In 1862–63 Alexander gave over roughly half of the remaining land to the east for what would become the earliest terrace development in the vicinity: the row of nine mainly double-fronted dwellings now known as nos. 1–9 Mount Pleasant. A communal garden and communal pump were laid out in front of this terrace. The land to the north was left untouched until 1871, when the present no. 10 was built at the western end of the remaining plot.

No. 10 is almost certainly the "newly-erected and well-finished detached house" at Mountpleasant advertised to let in the Belfast News-Letter of 21 March 1872. The Ordnance Survey town plan dated 1871–73 shows the building as considerably narrower than it is today, which, combined with the visible vertical joint in the brickwork to the right of the entrance, confirms that the eastern portion fronted by the canted bay is an addition. The valuation book records this addition as having been made in 1873, so shortly after the original western section was completed that the house may never have been occupied in its original, smaller form. The identity of the architect is uncertain, though the similarity to nos. 1–9 suggests the same architect was responsible for both.

The first occupant recorded in the valuation book in 1873 appears to have been a Mrs Magee, with Hamilton Joseph Magee — described as a wine and ale merchant — listed as householder in the 1877 street directory. Jones Gray, Collector of Customs, is recorded in 1889, followed by a Mrs Robinson from 1892 until 1900. The property then lay vacant for a year, and accordingly does not appear in the 1901 census. The lease was subsequently taken up by Mrs Elizabeth Munce, who is noted in the 1911 census as living in the house with her son, granddaughter and a domestic servant; the building is recorded in that census as a first-class dwelling containing thirteen rooms.

By 1918 Thomas W. Henry had taken up residence. Henry — the brother of the artist Paul Henry — was a local architect who specialised largely in commercial buildings but was also responsible for the large Ainsworth housing development in the north of the city and for Shankill Library. He remained at no. 10 until 1927, when he moved to a house he had designed himself in Malone Park. G. W. Bannister is recorded as the resident in 1932, Dr R. Jones in 1943, and Mrs Jones — presumably Dr Jones's widow — in 1951, remaining until at least 1967. The current owners acquired the property in the 1970s.

In 1925 the remaining undeveloped land to the east of no. 10 was acquired by the Church of Ireland Parish of St Bartholomew, which built the present church there in 1929–30. The residue of the plot to the immediate north and west was given over to housing: nos. 12 and 14 Mount Pleasant were built in 1928–29 to designs by W. D. R. Taggart, and the three pairs of semi-detached dwellings along Stranmillis Road (nos. 173–181) date from roughly the same period. The construction of these houses involved the demolition of Summer Hill's gate lodge and the relocation of its entrance to its current position off Mount Pleasant itself. In 1963 the parish used what remained of the plot to the north and northwest of the church for the construction of a hall and rectory.