45 Sunnyside Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT7 3EX

45 Sunnyside Street, Belfast is a terraced two-storey redbrick house with attic dormer, built around 1870 as part of a terrace of six similar properties lining the north side of Sunnyside Street. The house was designed and developed by Thomas Fitzpatrick, a remarkable working sculptor and building contractor who became well known for his stone carving work on major Belfast buildings including the Harbour Office and the Merchant Hotel. Fitzpatrick had begun his career as a sculptor in partnership with his brother William in the 1850s before becoming a general building contractor in the 1860s, remaining active until the 1890s or later.

The terrace, once known as Sunnyside Terrace, was one of the first developments along the newly laid out Sunnyside Street. At the time of its construction, the area to the west of the Ormeau Road was largely open and sparsely built. The houses first appear in valuation records as unfinished in 1869 and were completed and valued in 1870 at £15 each. According to surviving Fitzpatrick Brothers papers, the houses were sold in pairs: numbers 43 and 45 were sold to Thomas Neill, who occupied one and let the other, while numbers 51 and 53 went to Samuel McCormick on similar terms. The ownership of the middle pair is less certain, though surviving records indicate they passed through several landlords in quick succession and were both let out. A further two terraced houses were added to the east of the row between 1905 and 1909.

The building is L-shaped on plan facing south. The pitched roof is covered with artificial slate and topped with black clay ridge tiles, with a replacement brick chimneystack to the west fitted with terracotta pots. A wall-head dormer is shared with the adjoining house number 43, featuring timber bargeboard, redbrick walling and a diminutive square-headed window opening. Plastic guttering is fitted to a painted stone eaves course with a polychromatic brick frieze below and plastic downpipe.

The main walling is redbrick laid in Flemish bond with a painted sandstone plinth course. The front elevation is two windows wide. The windows have square-headed openings with painted masonry lintels, painted masonry sills and replacement timber casement windows. The decorative focal point is a painted masonry doorcase to the right of the windows, adjoining that of the neighbouring house. The doorcase comprises a square-headed door opening with replacement timber panelled door and rectangular overlight, flanked by plain pilasters on plinth blocks and oversized foliate console brackets (the eastern bracket shared with the adjoining house) supporting a shared lintel cornice and decorative segmental stone panel above. The front door opens onto a cobblelock front garden enclosed by replacement steel railings on a brick wall.

The west side elevation is abutted by adjoining house number 47. The rear elevation is abutted by a shared two-storey return with cement rendered walling, replacement hardwood casement windows and masonry sills, a uPVC glazed door and steel steps providing access to the first floor. A small enclosed rear yard with screen wall opens into the rear garden. The east side elevation is abutted by adjoining house number 43. The terrace forms part of a street-fronting row with communal rear access by lane opening onto the street along the west gable of number 53.

The house has been extensively refurbished with the loss of much original fabric, but retains its overall composition and decorative detailing. It continues to make a marked contribution to the late nineteenth-century character of Sunnyside Street.

The occupants of number 45 over time reflect the comfortable middle-class character of the development. Early occupants included Charles McClelland (1870), Allen Martin, traveller (1880), Samuel Thomas Roberts, clerk (1884), Samuel Orr, bookkeeper (1887) and Robert Glover, engine and boiler inspector (1892). By the 1901 census the occupier was William B Melville, another engine and boiler inspector, living with his English wife and four young children. Subsequent occupants included Eliza Martin (1903), Daniel McConville, labourer (1904), and Geo T Fisher, engineer with the GPO (1905). By the 1911 census the occupier was William McCready, a lithographic printer who had previously lived in the neighbouring house, living with his wife and seven of his nine children. His three older daughters worked as seamstresses and his 16-year-old son in the draper's business. Later occupants were David Tully, GPO overseer (1929), S Alexander, damask mounter (1931), James Glendinning, joiner (1936), Mrs G Stone (1937), J A Stone, electrician (1945), James N Gilliland of the RUC (1968) and Ms Laura Gilliland (1976), who lived in the house until at least 1980. The house continues in use as a private residence.