66 Donegall Pass, Belfast, County Antrim, BT7 1BU

66 Donegall Pass is a three-storey, two-bay mid-terrace early Victorian townhouse built around 1845, forming part of a terrace formerly known as Apsley Place. It sits on Donegall Pass close to St Mary Magdalene Church, to the south of Belfast city centre and east of Shaftesbury Square. The building has since been converted to office use, though the interventions have been largely sympathetic, and both its external historic fabric and its interior layout and features have been substantially preserved. It contributes positively to the group of listed buildings of which it forms part, retaining the style, proportions, and detailing of the wider terrace.

The building has a square plan with a two-storey rear return. The roof is pitched and clad in natural slate with clay ridge tiles, overhanging eaves with timber soffits and paired eaves brackets, and cast-iron rainwater goods comprising semi-circular gutters and circular downpipes. The brick chimneys have replacement clay pots.

The external walls are of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with ruled-and-lined render to the ground floor of the principal elevation and smooth render to the rear. The windows are timber sliding sash with horns: 6-over-6 pane and 6-over-3 pane lights, set under flat arches with painted masonry cills, and with continuous cills at first floor level. The entrance door is a four-panel raised-and-fielded bolection-moulded panelled door with a margin-paned overlight. It is flanked by panelled pilasters rising to foliated console brackets that support a moulded canopy surmounted by stuccowork. The front door is approached by four steps.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged, with the entrance to the left and two windows at each of the ground, first, and second floor levels. The left gable adjoins number 64 Donegall Pass and the right gable adjoins number 68. The rear elevation is also asymmetrically arranged: at ground floor level to the left there is a margin-paned sash window, while the first and second floor windows match those on the south elevation. To the right, the two-storey rear return abuts the main block, with various openings to its east cheek, a single window to the gable end at first floor level, and a landing window above the return junction.

To the front of the building is a paved area used as a private car park; to the rear is a tarmac yard enclosed by a palisade gate. The surrounding area is principally two- and three-storey residential buildings from various periods. The former School of Music stands opposite on the south side of the street, and St Mary Magdalene Church lies to the west.

The terrace was built in 1846 in what was then a sparsely developed part of a rapidly growing Belfast. Donegall Pass had been laid out by the late 18th century across heavily wooded land used as a deer park by the Donegall family, Belfast's principal landowners. The architectural historian Brett has taken the view that Donegall Pass and the Ormeau Road were laid out as carriage drives through these woodland estates, and that it was not until the Donegalls' control over their pleasure grounds began to diminish in the 1820s that permission was given to build in the area. By 1823 the land on the north side of Donegall Pass had passed to Henry Joy, proprietor of the Belfast Newsletter and a prominent figure in the political life of the town. The construction of a gasworks to the east in 1823 likely contributed to the area's subsequent development. At the time Apsley Place was built in the mid-19th century, it was one of a handful of terrace developments along the northern side of the Pass, while the land to the south was largely occupied by substantial villas set in spacious grounds.

The developer of the terrace was Thomas Gaffikin (1809–1893), a farmer's son and butcher who built several other terraces in south Belfast. Gaffikin lived at number 70 and later number 56 Apsley Place from the time of its construction until he moved to a new terrace he had built at Queen's Elms, where he remained for the rest of his life. He later became the proprietor of a linen and linen-yarn business and served as a town councillor for Cromac and then St George's Ward. He is particularly noted for his 1875 lecture entitled Belfast Fifty Years Ago, which gives a vivid account of social life in early 19th-century Belfast.

The houses were occupied by a succession of tenants across the years, reflecting the range of occupations open to the middle and petty bourgeois classes during Belfast's period of most rapid expansion. Early residents tended to be wealthy business proprietors or gentlemen, but as the merchant class gradually moved out to North Down and elsewhere, the tenantry shifted perceptibly toward the prosperous petty bourgeoisie. The censuses of 1901 and 1911 show that by the early 20th century some tenants were wealthy enough to employ a domestic servant, while others supplemented their income by taking in boarders. The houses do not appear to have been used as commercial premises until the modern era.

The first recorded tenant at number 66 was the Reverend George Bellis in 1846–47, followed by Hugh Larmour, gentleman, in 1850, and William Larmour, corn merchant, in 1852. At the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1859 the house was initially occupied by Alexander Moore before falling vacant; it was valued at £28 and recorded as three storeys in height. The Bryson family — Mrs C. Bryson and then William Bryson — were resident from 1863, followed by Mrs Sarah Armstrong from 1870. Later tenants included Joseph Taylor, draper (1877–90), C. Newsome MA (1896–97), and W. H. White, tailoring and dressmaking (1900). The 1901 census records the occupier as Harriette Stubbs, a lady supervisor from Sussex, living with a nurse, an elderly boarder of independent means, and a single domestic servant from Donegal. By 1911 the residents were Robert Johnston, a caterer, his Welsh wife, and their six young children; the eldest son, aged 16, was described as a labourer and noted as unemployed. The building is now the offices of Hearth Housing Association and the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society.