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

No. 30 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced house built circa 1896–1898 on the east side of McMaster Street, East Belfast, in the Ballymacarrett townland. It was constructed by landowner John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, architects who were active from the 1890s into the early 20th century and who also designed comparable terraced streets in Belfast including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and a red brick chimney stack at the south side. A painted ogee-profile cast-iron rainwater gutter and uPVC downpipe are supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course set on an ovolo-moulded corbel course. The walls are built in English garden-wall bond — red brick laid with alternating courses of headers and stretchers — with two polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick and sill course at first-floor level. Windows are replacement 1-over-1 camber-headed horizontally divided timber sliding sashes. The door is a replacement timber panelled door with a camber-headed transom light. Both windows and door sit within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and projecting masonry sills.

The principal (west) elevation has the entrance door to the left, accessed via a concrete threshold, flanked by a window to the right. At first-floor level there are two windows, offset slightly to the right. The north gable abuts No. 28 McMaster Street and the south gable abuts No. 32 McMaster Street. The rear (south) elevation was not accessible at the time of survey, though an internal survey indicated that a single-storey flat-roof extension abuts the rear elevation at the right; the exposed section at the left contains one window, and there are two windows at first-floor level. Access to the enclosed rear yard is from the entry via a timber-sheeted entrance door to the east, contained within high-level brick walling on all sides.

SETTING

The house sits in the middle of the east terrace's two-storey block, facing onto McMaster Street. The wide street, formerly cobbled, is now largely concrete with small cobbled areas at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs, original lamp posts and electric lighting (converted from former gas lights), and original tiled street signage 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 the centre, accessed via a narrow entry running north–south between the back yards of Lendrick Street and McMaster Street. The street narrows towards Major Street at the south.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

No. 30 first appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map for Belfast of 1920–21, by which time both terraces of McMaster Street had been completed. Belfast Street Directories show that while the western terrace (Nos. 1–37) and Nos. 6–14 on the eastern side were constructed in 1898 and 1899, the remainder of the eastern terrace — including No. 30, which forms part of Nos. 16–52 — was not built until 1908, a full decade after the street's first phase of construction. The land owned by John McMaster was wedge-shaped, meaning the terraces became progressively narrower and the gardens smaller towards the southern end of the street.

Annual Revisions record that the first occupant of No. 30 was Mr. James Dunlop, who took possession in the year the terrace was completed. Dunlop was employed as a coppersmith at the nearby Harland and Wolff shipyards. In 1908 the house was valued at £8 and was let by John McMaster. By 1910 it had passed to John Crichton, a cabinet maker, who continued to reside there until his death in the 1930s, after which his widow Margaret Crichton was recorded as the main occupant. By the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930 the value remained at £8, rising to £11 by the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935. The 1911 Census Building Return described No. 30 as a second-class dwelling consisting of seven rooms.

The Second General Revaluation of Northern Ireland, carried out after the Second World War, recorded that ownership of the street had passed from John McMaster to an L. McMaster (an unknown relative), and that No. 30 was by then occupied by a Mrs. Hamilton, with the house valued at £12. The Hamilton family continued to live at No. 30 until at least 1990; among the occupants of that period was Mr. A. Hamilton, a plater in the shipyard, recorded as resident during the 1960s and 1970s.

The parlour houses on McMaster Street were constructed to new housing and planning regulations intended to improve living standards in Belfast. As a result, the terraces were among the first late Victorian industrial houses in Belfast to be supplied with running water and flushable toilets, made possible by the construction of a new city drainage system. Gas was also piped into each house for lighting, a practice which, together with the improved sanitary facilities, set McMaster Street apart from the more squalid early Victorian housing typical of Belfast at the time. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s. McMaster Street escaped damage during the 1941 Belfast Blitz, when Luftwaffe raids on the shipyards caused widespread destruction to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road.

During the 1970s the Ballymacarrett area underwent extensive redevelopment and many comparable red brick terraces were demolished. McMaster Street survived as an intact remnant of late Victorian working-class housing. No. 30 was listed in 1987 along with the rest of the terrace. In 1994 the neighbourhood was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment, with criteria established to ensure that any additions to the terrace remain in keeping with the original design and fabric of the street.

No. 30 has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street and is of local interest.