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

27 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay terraced parlour house built around 1896, located on the west side of McMaster Street in the Ballymacarrett district of East Belfast. It was developed by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, architects active between the 1890s and 1910s who were responsible for several similar terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place. The house forms part of a terrace of 37 parlour houses built in several phases between 1899 and 1908, and shares group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street.

McMaster Street is the only late Victorian terrace in Belfast to have survived in reasonably original condition. It was built close to the Harland and Wolff shipyard on Queen's Island, which by 1900 employed 9,000 men, and the surrounding area of Ballymacarrett was also home to ropeworks, linen manufacture, engineering and fertiliser businesses trading worldwide. What had been fields, cottages and mansions around an industrial core in the mid-19th century became progressively given over to terraced rows housing the workers who were largely responsible for Belfast's industrial prosperity.

The houses were built to a notably high specification for workers' housing, incorporating running water and flush toilets — emerging technologies at the time — and were designed in compliance with building controls requiring a rear entrance, a back yard, and an outdoor toilet. Gas was piped in for lighting, though electricity did not become commonplace until the 1930s. The male inhabitants were typically employed in shipbuilding; female inhabitants commonly worked in the linen or rope industries.

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles. There is a central rooflight on the east slope and a modern red brick chimney stack at the south side. Painted ogee-profile cast-iron rainwater goods are 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 three polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick-and-sill course at first-floor level, and decorative detailing above the first-floor windows. All polychromatic brickwork is now painted except for the section above the first-floor windows. The windows are replacement 1-over-1 timber sliding sash windows. The windows and door are set within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and have projecting masonry sills.

The principal elevation faces east onto McMaster Street. The entrance is at the right of the façade and comprises a replacement timber panelled door with vision panels and a square-headed transom light, accessed by a rendered threshold. A window flanks the entrance to the left, and two windows at first-floor level are offset slightly to the left.

The north gable is abutted by number 25 McMaster Street. The south gable is abutted by a single-storey extension with a pitched roof with replacement tiles, which in turn abuts number 29 McMaster Street. Access to the house and yard was not provided at the time of inspection, and the rear elevation was not visible from the entry point. The rear of the property 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 Parker Street and McMaster Street.

The house sits at the centre of the west two-storey block of the terrace, facing onto a wide street that was formerly cobbled and is now largely concrete, with small cobbled areas remaining at each end. The pavement is wide and retains granite kerbs and original lamp posts with electric lighting, which formerly carried gas. Original tiled street signage is present at the north and south ends of the street. The street narrows towards Major Street at the south.

Numbers 13 to 37 — all two-storey houses and yards — were valued at £8 in the 1900 revaluation, slightly less than the larger houses at numbers 1 to 11 at the north end of the street. Number 27 contained three bedrooms, was fitted with gas, was rented at five shillings per week, and was estimated to have cost £76 to construct.

The first recorded tenant was William Coulter, who leased the house from the developer John McMaster. The 1901 census records him as a shipwright living with his wife and five young children. He was followed by Robert Campbell, an engine driver, who was present at the 1911 census — by which time he was unemployed — and lived with his wife and eight children. The older six children were working: the daughters as cloth examiners and as a patent turner (engaged in turning out or over the edges of collars, facings, bands, cuffs, pockets or flaps), and the sons as an engineman, an apprentice mounter, and an apprentice brass moulder. The next recorded tenant was James O'Neill, a painter, from 1912. He died at Purdysburn Hospital in 1924, after which the house was occupied by his widow.

The O'Neill family was forced to vacate the house during the Belfast Blitz. Four air raids struck Belfast during April and May 1941, during which over half the city's housing stock was damaged. Although McMaster Street was not destroyed, the area was targeted in raids on the nights of 7–8 April and 4–5 May 1941. The 1942 street directory records that most houses in the street had been vacated, including number 27, probably as a result of fire damage. By 1943 the majority of residents had returned, but the O'Neill family did not, and the house was subsequently taken over by a Mrs Currie, followed by John Currie, a fitter, from 1951. The Currie family remained resident until at least 1980.

In the 1970s, widespread redevelopment led to the demolition of many other terraces in the surrounding area. McMaster Street was listed in 1987 and designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment in 1994. Two houses in the street have since been restored by Hearth.