19 Malone Place, Belfast, County Antrim, BT12 5FD

19 Malone Place is a two-storey, two-bay Victorian mid-terrace dwelling, formerly the end house of its terrace, built around 1850. It is located off the Lisburn Road, adjacent to Sandy Row, approximately one mile south of Belfast city centre, and forms part of a terrace that was constructed in at least two phases — the earlier houses dating from the late 1840s and further houses added in the early 1860s.

Externally, the house retains its general historic character. The roof is pitched with natural slate and clay ridge tiles, with replacement galvanised steel rainwater goods and a red-brick chimney. The walls are of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with a projected smooth rendered plinth course and a corbelled eaves course. Windows are 1-over-1 timber sliding sash with no horns and painted masonry cills set beneath flat arches. The replacement timber panelled front door has a fixed rectangular overlight and is flanked by panelled pilasters that rise to a pair of simple consoles supporting a projected moulded cornice. Some historic features were lost when the terrace was refurbished around 2000, though the overall external appearance remains intact.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged: at ground floor, the door sits to the left with a single window to the right; at first floor there are two windows. The left gable abuts number 21 Malone Place. The rear elevation is also asymmetrically arranged, with single uPVC replacement windows at ground and first floor on the left side. To the right, a subservient two-storey rear return with lower eaves and ridge levels projects from the main block. Various timber sliding sash windows on both floors of the return look into the rear yard. The gable end and right cheek of the return are blank. The right gable abuts number 17 Malone Place. The plan is square with this two-storey rear return.

Internally, some character has been lost through modernisation, though original detailing is understood to have been covered up rather than removed outright.

The house sits within a terrace that faces directly onto a narrow street. The opposite side of the street is bounded by a rubble masonry wall retaining the embankment to the railway, alongside a small park enclosed by gated railings. Across the Lisburn Road stands the University Road Moravian Church. The former Maternity Hospital lies to the west and a large modern apartment block to the north.

The site at the foot of Sandy Row lay well outside the built-up area of Belfast until the 1850s, with Sandy Row itself thought to follow a route of medieval origin. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–33 shows a small structure on the site, possibly associated with the Malone turnpike at this junction, but the surrounding area was otherwise little developed, consisting mostly of housing along the main routes into Belfast. By the time the terrace was built, the landscape was a mixture of factories, brick fields, housing, larger mansions and open ground. The most prominent local landmark was the Union Workhouse and Fever Hospital, dating from 1841 and 1849 respectively, and several inhabitants of Malone Place were employed there at various times.

According to annotations by Brett on the 1850 Hodges and Smith map — on which the terrace makes its first appearance — the site was owned from 1798 by a gentleman named William Irvine, and was purchased in 1826, along with the neighbouring plot, by Arthur Gaffikin, a butcher and property developer who later became the proprietor of a linen business. Gaffikin is commemorated in the name of Gaffikin Street, which runs to the rear of Malone Place. The terrace does not appear in the street directory of 1846–47 but is listed in the 1850 edition, suggesting that numbers 9 to 19 were built in the late 1840s. The terrace was constructed to the rear of a larger house called Malone Cottage, which faced onto Sandy Row (then known as Malone Road). It is possible that Malone Cottage and Malone Place were developed together by Gaffikin and subsequently sold on, or that the land was sold as individual building plots.

In Griffith's Valuation of 1860, Sarah Warnock is listed as landlady and the houses are valued at £10. An advertisement in the Belfast Newsletter of 1857 offered the houses to let as "neat, well-finished houses in Malone Place, adjoining the Post Office, containing Parlour, Kitchen, Three Bedrooms with Gas and Water at the greatly reduced rent of £11." Numbers 21 to 29 were built between 1860 and 1863 by property developer Moses Tate, valued slightly higher at £11 — and number 29 at £12 — though these valuations were later reduced in 1888 to £10 and £11 respectively. The Belfast Newsletter of 1862 noted that "a number of respectable houses have lately been built on the above Ground and others are in progress of erection."

Further building land in the area was subsequently offered by Arthur Gaffikin, and four slightly larger houses were built on the far side of Blondin Street between 1870 and 1877. These were later taken over as the Midnight Mission Rescue Home, a refuge for women described at the time as "fallen," and eventually accommodated unmarried mothers, operating as a maternity hospital. The four original dwellings were demolished in 1924 and a new Rescue and Maternity Home was built on the site to designs by William Godfrey Ferguson. In 1973, Malone Place Hospital was absorbed by the Jubilee Maternity Hospital; maternity services ceased there after 1981, though the property has remained with the Health Trust.

The first valuation map to show the terrace, dating from around 1860, depicts ornamental railings and a step to the front of each of the original six houses, along with rear returns and outbuildings in each yard. A subsequent map edition from around 1860–1895 shows a boundary post and watering trough at the junction with the Lisburn Road, and a tramline running behind the terrace in Napier Street, which provided employment for some residents of Malone Place.

The houses were home to people of varying social standing, mostly from the skilled manual, clerical and supervisory classes. Many occupations are represented, but a large proportion of residents worked in the textile industry in some form — in cloth manufacture or as drapers, tailors or in related trades. The Belfast Newsletter records occasional glimpses of other aspects of life in the terrace: in 1867, Jane Crosbey of number 17 was summoned to appear in court on a charge of being disorderly in a public street, with magistrates having received information "as to the character of the house she kept." In October and November 1876, a story ran in the Newsletter over several weeks when a boarder at number 23 was accused of stealing a top coat, umbrella, watch, chain and £1 10s from a man staying the night in the dwelling, culminating in a courtroom speech by the defendant and an angry riposte from his wife. By the time of the 1901 and 1911 censuses, most houses were occupied by large extended families of the respectable, skilled working classes, rarely able to afford a servant, and with teenage children often contributing wages to the household. The houses were frequently renumbered during the later decades of the 19th century, making it difficult at times to identify the occupants of individual properties with certainty.

As far as can be determined, number 19 was occupied in 1850 by William Halliday, followed by Bartholomew Devine, college porter (1852), George Davison, draper (1858–59), Hugh Petticrew, book-keeper (1860–64), Margaret McClements (1865–70), William Cairns, law clerk (1877), Thomas Taylor, bootmaker (1880), Mr Frith, clerk (1884), Mrs Rea (1887), Thomas Rea, dentist (1890), and Margaret Bolton, dressmaker (1895–97). From 1899 the occupier was Arthur McDermott of the Royal Irish Constabulary. In the 1901 census he is recorded as a constable from County Leitrim, living with his wife, two young sons, two sisters and a brother-in-law, and prosperous enough to employ a domestic servant, a widow of sixty. His sisters worked as a dressmaker and a seamstress, and his brother-in-law as a linen merchant. By 1907 the occupier was F. Dowds, carpenter, followed in 1911 by Thomas Moore, a widower from County Tyrone employed as a foreman at the nearby tram yard, who had a housekeeper in her fifties.