16 Joy Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT2 8LE

16 Joy Street is a mid-terrace, three-storey redbrick Georgian townhouse built around 1840, situated on the junction of Joy Street and Catherine Street North in Belfast city centre. It forms part of a terrace of nine similar houses lining the east side of Joy Street, and is considered one of the finest and rarest surviving examples of late Georgian terraced housing in central Belfast. The building was restored around 1985 by Hearth Housing Association and continues to be used as a private dwelling. It is currently owned by a housing association and lies within a conservation area.

Architectural Description

The house is rectangular in plan and faces west. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles and two rendered brick chimneystacks fitted with clay pots. Cast-iron guttering runs along the brick eaves course, matched by a cast-iron downpipe.

The walls are built in redbrick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing and a moulded plinth course. The front elevation is two windows wide, with square-headed window openings featuring rendered reveals, painted masonry sills, and replacement 6/6 timber sash windows. The principal doorway has a round-headed opening with a moulded surround incorporating a keystone, scribed pilasters, and impost mouldings. It is fitted with a replacement timber panelled door beneath a lintel cornice, with a replacement fanlight above, and opens onto a concrete step. An iron bootscraper is set into the wall within a rendered surround.

The rear elevation is rendered and is abutted by a single-storey return; it contains both square-headed and round-headed window openings fitted with replacement 6/6 timber sash windows. The north side elevation adjoins No. 14 Joy Street and the south side elevation adjoins No. 18 Joy Street.

Despite restoration works, much of the original architectural fabric remains intact. The building retains the style, proportions, and detailing typical of the Georgian period, and contributes significantly to the group value of the terrace as a whole.

Historical Background

Joy Street takes its name from a former paper mill that stood at the junction of Ormeau Avenue and Cromac Street, owned by Henry Joy, a relative of Henry Joy McCracken, the United Irishman. The construction of the mill's dam reclaimed acres of land to the south-east of Belfast's town centre around the turn of the 19th century, and Joy Street and the surrounding Markets area were laid out on this reclaimed land during the late Georgian period, gradually developing southwards from May Street.

The terrace first appears on the 1858 edition of the Ordnance Survey map for Belfast, though it was certainly built before that date. Neighbouring buildings on Hamilton Street were already under construction by 1832–33, and Joy Street was recorded in the Belfast Street Directories by 1843, at which time the street was numbered differently. The grandiose redbrick terraces erected around 1830–40 were originally occupied by well-respected merchants. Following the Great Famine, however, a large influx of working-class labourers into Belfast caused the merchant class to abandon the area in favour of the new suburbs at Malone to the south. From the 1850s onwards, the buildings on Joy Street and Hamilton Street passed into working-class occupation, and a number of the larger dwellings were converted into lodging and boarding houses. The establishment of Queen's College in 1849 also brought student residents to the Markets area seeking cheap lodgings, a population that largely moved away by around 1850–70 to accommodation closer to the university. After this second departure, the lodging houses of Joy Street and Hamilton Street became predominantly occupied by business lodgers and performers working in the nearby music halls and theatres.

No. 16 Joy Street's recorded occupancy reflects these broader patterns. By 1852 the Belfast Street Directory recorded the house as occupied by a Mrs Harriet Crawford. In the 1859 Griffith's Valuation, No. 16 was let by Ebenezer Crawford — who owned the remainder of the terrace — to a Mrs Agnes Barry at an annual rent of £18. The valuer classified it as a three-storey B+ class dwelling, described as "not new but in sound repair," measuring 6 by 8 yards and valued at £16.

Annual Revision records show that between 1863 and 1877 a Mrs Abbott vacated the house and was replaced by a Mrs Jane R. Reid, who appears to have remained until 1900. However, the Belfast Street Directories record that David Cowan, a coach trimmer, and Ebenezer Long, a "block cutter," occupied the address in 1877 and 1880 respectively. In 1884 the house was reduced in value to £14, though the reason is unknown; notably, the entire terrace was similarly devalued the same year.

By the 1901 Census, the house was in the possession of Mrs Catherine McElroy, a 30-year-old Roman Catholic widow who worked as a seamstress in a factory. Like many householders in the Markets area, she let out rooms to boarders, and two lodgers recorded that year were a musician and a music hall manager from Dublin — a pattern typical of the neighbourhood's character at the time. The 1901 and 1911 Census Building Returns described the house as a second-class dwelling with six rooms.

Around 1900, when McElroy first appears as occupant, the house's valuation was again reduced to £12 10s., though it had recovered to £14 by 1906, around the same time a Ms Charlotte Harding purchased the terrace from Ebenezer Crawford. McElroy continued to occupy No. 16 until at least 1918 and was still recorded as occupant when the Annual Revisions ended in 1930. In 1920 Harding put Nos. 14–26 Joy Street up for public auction; the advertised yearly rent for the terrace and a number of other attached buildings was £416 3s.

By the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935, the terrace had passed to Mr Joseph Tyney, described in the 1911 Census as a manufacturer of ship parts, who is presumed to have acquired the houses at auction. At that point No. 16 was recorded simply as a private dwelling occupied by a Mr Fred Hopley and valued at £21. This valuation was unchanged by the Second General Revaluation of 1956–72, by which time a Mrs Katherine Hopley held the house, letting it from a J. R. McKee. Katherine Hopley continued to occupy No. 16 as a private dwelling from the 1940s through to the 1980s.

In the mid-1960s the Sub-Committee of the Ancient Monuments Advisory Council recommended that Nos. 14–26 Joy Street be maintained as "an excellent illustration of Georgian housing in pre-industrial Belfast." After years of decline, Nos. 14–26 were restored for the Housing Executive between 1982 and 1986 by W. D. R. & R. T. Taggart. The architectural historian Marcus Patton described the intact terrace as "the finest block of Georgian houses in Belfast" and a good example of "the grandeur and dignity of the Markets area when it was first developed." No. 16 Joy Street was listed in 1985 along with the rest of the terrace.