16 College Gardens, Belfast

16 College Gardens, Belfast is a mid-terrace, three-storey with attic, red brick late Victorian town house, built in 1877. The architect is unknown. The listing covers the former townhouse together with its entrance step and boot-scraper.

The house forms part of a block of four properties with Nos. 15, 17 and 18 College Gardens, which together present a largely symmetrical frontage to the street. Within this group, No. 15 mirrors No. 18 at the gable ends, with the narrower Nos. 16 and 17 occupying the centre. The building sits midway along College Gardens — originally known as College Gardens Avenue — a tree-lined street of similarly scaled town houses running between Malone Road and Lisburn Road, within the Queens Conservation Area. The houses face south and overlook the grounds of Methodist College.

EXTERIOR

The front (south) elevation is asymmetrical but well proportioned, with fine stucco detailing and a projecting canted bay. The roof is natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, though flat-roofed dormers have been added to both the front and rear pitches and are clad in PVC membrane. There are two chimneys: one shared with No. 15, rebuilt in modern red brick and fitted with several yellow clay pots; the other centred on the gable of the rear return, rendered and lacking both cap and pots. The projecting moulded eaves are carried on curved brackets that alternate with a pitched square motif on a deep frieze, all set on a projecting string course with a continuous band of dentils below. Rainwater goods consist of ogee-profile cast metal gutters to the main roof, with uPVC gutters and downpipes elsewhere.

The walls are red brick in Flemish bond with stucco dressings to the front (south) elevation, and English Garden Wall bond to the rear (north). Windows throughout are timber-framed, single-glazed sliding sashes: 1/1 panes to the front, and 2/2 panes to the rear and return, unless otherwise noted.

Front elevation (south): The entrance is positioned to the left (west) at ground floor, with a stuccoed canted bay of three windows to the right (east). Three equally spaced windows appear at first and second floor levels, with a wide flat-roofed dormer placed centrally above the eaves cornice at attic level. All windows are segmental-headed and diminish in height from ground to second floor. There is a painted render base plinth with a moulded top.

The ground floor bay has stop-chamfered heads and jambs to its windows, with heavy bull-nosed cills set within reveals, a decorative string course above the windows, and a projecting moulded cornice on block modillions. The entrance is approached through half-glazed double storm doors placed in front of the original square-headed timber-framed door. This original door has two full-height arched panels with raised fields and bolection moulding, and a plain-glass segmental arched overlight. The stucco surround is elaborate, with roll-edged reveals, foliated scrolled console brackets, a moulded hood, a floral stone roundel between the console brackets, and plain spandrels — all painted. At first floor, the windows have similar hoods with smaller brackets and simple fluting detail. The walls at first and second floor are predominantly red brick, with projecting moulded stucco surrounds and cills to the windows at both levels (painted). Above the second floor window heads there is decorative foliated stucco detail.

Rear elevation (north): The rear was surveyed from Elmwood Mews, as access to the rear yard was not obtained. A three-storey return is built at half-landing level to the right (west) side, and a slightly advanced three-storey hipped-roof projection to the left has two windows at each of the first and second floors, a single window at ground floor (sliding sash, 1/1 panes), and a uPVC door at basement level. The red brick walls are in English Garden Wall bond and are painted up to the underside of the second floor cills. Detailing is simpler than the front, with projecting brick eaves courses, soldier-coursed brick headers, and square-edged painted cills. A flat-roofed dormer with a modern casement window serves the attic of the main building.

The north elevation of the return has one window at second floor level, offset to the left (east), below which a two-storey flat-roofed extension abuts. There is a projecting timber bargeboard and an exposed carved purlin end to the roof.

West elevation: Abutted by No. 16 College Gardens, including the return.

East elevation: The main building is abutted by No. 15 College Gardens. The east face of the return overlooks the yard and is detailed to match the rear of the main building — painted white brick walls in English Garden Wall bond with soldier-coursed headers and square-cut stone cills. Boxed timber eaves support a half-round uPVC gutter. Openings are informally arranged. At second floor there are three windows: one uPVC top-hung casement, one timber-framed sliding sash with 6/6 panes, and one with 2/2 panes. At first floor there are three windows matching those above, except both sliding sashes have 2/2 panes. At ground floor (upper parts visible only) there are four windows: three sliding sashes with 4/4, 6/6, and 4/4 panes respectively sharing a common cill, and one modern timber casement with a top-hung night vent. The first and second floor uPVC windows appear to be set within their original openings.

SETTING AND BOUNDARIES

The building sits mid-terrace, rectangular on plan and aligned east–west parallel to the road. The front boundary wall has been removed to provide off-street parking, and the front garden is laid with precast concrete paving slabs. Hedging marks the boundary with the adjoining front gardens of Nos. 15 and 17. The front door opens onto two entrance steps, one stone with a bull-nosed edge and one concrete, flanked by painted dwarf walls. There is a cast iron boot-scraper on the top step, thought to be original. To the rear, a two-storey red brick extension runs along the rear boundary and is joined by a lower red brick wall with a wide opening fitted with painted sheeted timber folding doors; behind this is a flat roof. The six doorbells at the entrance indicate the property has been subdivided into apartments.

ALTERATIONS

The removal of the front boundary wall and the addition of flat-roofed dormers and a flat-roofed rear extension diminish the historic character to some extent. The flat-roofed rear extension appears to have been added around 1990. The rear chimney at eaves level to the main roof was removed at the same time that the main chimney stack was rebuilt, with Conservation Area grant assistance, following works completed in February 1991. Planning approval was granted in September 2013 to convert the building to six apartments. In 2015, grant assistance was awarded towards re-slating the roof in natural slate and repairing windows, historic joinery, and plasterwork. Despite these alterations, the original rear return survives largely intact and most of the sliding sash windows remain in place.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

College Gardens occupies land that, prior to the early 19th century, formed part of a series of strip farms running from what are now Malone Road and University Road to the Bog Meadows. These strips were probably laid out in the early 17th century. Their integrity was broken up by the cutting of Lisburn Road between 1816 and 1819, and by the construction of the Ulster Railway between 1837 and 1839. Around the same time, greater security of tenure from the Donegall estate led to the gentrification of what remained of these farms, with the building or upgrading of existing structures to create small country villas and the laying out of modest demesnes within the formerly farmed plots.

The land immediately north and south of College Gardens belonged to one such villa, 'Vermont', a house predating 1770, possibly rebuilt or enlarged around 1815 and enlarged again in the 1840s — on the latter occasion by John Riddell, a Belfast ironmonger. The construction of Queen's College a short distance to the north-east in 1845 triggered the suburbanisation of the area, and in 1865 Vermont itself was sold for the building of Methodist College. The college was completed in 1868 and a new private avenue was laid out on lower ground immediately to the north, with building plots on its northern side. Development proceeded from the eastern end: present Nos. 1–6 were built in 1871; Nos. 7–18, including No. 16, in 1877; Nos. 33 and 34 in 1879; Nos. 19–22 in 1881; Nos. 23–26 in 1882; and Nos. 27–32 in 1883. The developer of everything from No. 11 to No. 32 appears to have been the Reverend George Cron, then minister of the Evangelical Union Church in Wellington Place.

The first recorded occupant of No. 16 was W. McKeown, listed in the 1880 street directory as a leather merchant, whose family remained until around 1894. After a period of vacancy, H. Riddell, an engineer, took up the lease around 1896–97 and stayed until 1900, after which the property lay empty for a year or two before Saville C. Hardy, a linen manufacturer, became resident. The 1911 census records Mr Hardy living there with his spinster sister Florence Hardy, his nephew Brian Hardy, and a domestic servant; the building is noted as a first-class dwelling with nine rooms in family use. The Hardys were still in residence in 1918. By 1924 the house was being shared by the Reverend W. H. Smith and James C. Smith, a dental surgeon, who had become the sole occupant by at least 1932 and appears to have operated his surgery from within the building. Mr Smith was still recorded there in 1969, and a Kathleen Smyth — possibly a relative — is named as householder in 1974. By 1980 the property had been converted to offices shared between D. Dorman & Co. (shipping agents) and Queen's University, with Hood McGowan Kirk Partnership listed as the sole occupant from 1986. That practice retained the property until around 2014, after which it passed into private hands. No. 16 College Gardens was listed in September 1979.