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

Number 15 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced parlour house, built circa 1896 on the west side of McMaster Street, East Belfast, in the townland of Ballymacarrett. 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.

Historical and Social Context

McMaster Street was constructed in several phases between 1899 and 1908 and is the only late Victorian workers' 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 was employing 9,000 men. The surrounding district of Ballymacarrett had transformed rapidly in the second half of the 19th century from an area of fields, cottages and mansions around an industrial core into dense rows of terraced housing, accommodating workers from the shipyards, ropeworks, linen mills, engineering works and fertiliser businesses that made Belfast a significant centre of world trade.

The street was built in stages. Numbers 2 to 14, a row of two-and-a-half-storey houses, were in place by 1899. Numbers 1 to 11, also two-and-a-half storeys, appear in the street directory for 1900 alongside notes of houses then under construction. By the time of the March 1901 census, numbers 1 to 35 were complete, and the remaining houses, numbers 16 to 52, were added by 1908.

The houses are of the parlour type and were built to a high specification for working-class housing of the period, with running water and flush toilets — then emerging technologies in workers' dwellings. Building regulations required each house to have a rear entrance, a back yard, and a toilet. Gas was piped in for lighting; electricity did not become commonplace until the 1930s, and lamp-lighters and window-tappers were daily visitors to the street. Male inhabitants were typically employed in shipbuilding; women commonly worked in the linen or rope industries. Larger families tended to occupy the houses at the north end of the street, which had an attic storey.

The houses on the western side of the street first entered valuation records in 1900. Number 15, along with numbers 13 to 37 — all two-storey houses and yards — was valued at £8, slightly below the higher valuations given to the larger houses at the northern end. The cost of construction was estimated at £76, and the weekly rent was five shillings.

History of the House

The first recorded occupant was James Johnston, iron turner, who leased the house from developer John McMaster. The 1900 valuation states the house was then four years old, though this appears to be an overestimate. The house contained three bedrooms and was fitted for gas. The 1901 census records Johnston living there with his wife and two children, the eldest of whom had just left school. By the 1911 census, the occupier was Robert William Allen, a carpenter and joiner of Welsh origin, living with his wife and three young children. By 1914 the tenant was William Wark, a labourer.

Unlike most neighbouring properties, number 15 escaped damage during the Belfast Blitz. Four air raids struck Belfast during April and May 1941, damaging more than half the city's housing stock. McMaster Street was targeted during raids on 7–8 April and 4–5 May 1941, and the 1942 street directory records that most houses in the street had been vacated, probably as a result of fire damage. Number 15 was unaffected, however, and by 1942 had been newly occupied by James McMaster, joiner. The McMaster family remained resident in the street until at least 1980.

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

Architectural Description

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles. There is a central rooflight window 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 sitting on an ovolo-moulded corbel course.

The walls are laid in English garden-wall bond — red brick with alternating courses of headers and stretchers — and feature three polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick-and-sill course at first-floor level, along with decorative detailing above the first-floor windows. All polychromatic brickwork is now painted except for that above the first-floor windows. Windows are one-over-one timber casements; the door is a replacement timber panelled door. Both windows and door are set within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and projecting masonry sills.

The principal (east) elevation faces McMaster Street. At the right is the entrance, comprising a replacement timber panelled door with a square-headed transom light, accessed via a rendered threshold step. To the left of the entrance is a window at ground-floor level; two windows are set at first-floor level, offset slightly to the left.

The north gable abuts number 13 McMaster Street, and the south gable abuts the two-storey number 17 McMaster Street. Access to the rear of the house and yard was not available at the time of survey, and the rear elevation is not visible from the western entry point.

Setting

Number 15 sits at the north end of the west terrace — the two-storey block — and faces directly onto McMaster Street. The wide street, formerly cobbled, is now largely concrete surfaced, with small cobbled areas remaining at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs, original lamp posts, and electric lighting converted from former gas fittings. Original tiled street signage survives at the north and south ends. 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–south between the back yards of Parker Street and McMaster Street. The street narrows towards Major Street at its southern end.

Number 15 has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street and is of local interest.