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

13 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced parlour house built around 1896, situated on the west side of McMaster Street in the Ballymacarrett district of East Belfast. It was developed by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, a practice active between the 1890s and 1910s who were responsible for a number of similar terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles, 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 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 three polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick-and-sill course at first floor level, and 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 sliding sashes. The door is a replacement timber panelled type. Both windows and door sit within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and projecting masonry sills.

The principal (east) elevation faces McMaster Street. The entrance is at the right, comprising a replacement timber panelled door with a square-headed transom light, accessed by a rendered threshold. A window sits to the left of the entrance. At first floor, two windows are offset slightly to the left. The north gable abuts number 11 McMaster Street, a two-storey-with-attic property. The south gable abuts number 15, a two-storey property. The rear elevation was not accessible for inspection. It 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 to south between the back yards of Parker Street and McMaster Street.

SETTING

Number 13 sits at the north end of the west terrace, the two-storey block of the street. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs, original lamp posts, and electric lighting converted from former gas lights. The street, formerly cobbled, is now largely concrete with small cobbled areas remaining at each end. Original tiled street signage survives at both the north and south ends. The street narrows towards Major Street to the south.

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

McMaster Street is the only late Victorian terrace in Belfast to have survived in reasonably original condition. It was built in several phases between 1899 and 1908, with number 13 forming part of the two-storey southern section. The street's origins lie directly in the rapid industrial expansion of Ballymacarrett in the late 19th century. Harland and Wolff had developed their shipyard on Queen's Island nearby, employing 9,000 men by 1900. The wider Ballymacarrett area was also a centre for ropeworks, linen manufacture, engineering, and fertiliser production. What had been, in the mid-19th century, a landscape of fields, cottages, and mansions around an industrial core was progressively given over to terraced housing for the workers who drove Belfast's new prosperity.

McMaster Street was constructed in phases. 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 1900 street directory alongside references to houses then under construction. By the census of March 1901, numbers 1 to 35 were complete, with number 37 appearing in the 1901 street directory. The remaining houses, numbers 16 to 52, were added by 1908. The houses on the western side of the street first appear in valuation records in 1900.

The houses are of the parlour type and were built to a high specification for workers' housing, with running water and flush toilets — both emerging technologies in this context at the time. Building controls 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; female inhabitants commonly in the linen or rope industries. Larger families were housed at the north end of the street, in the properties with an attic storey.

Number 13 specifically was leased by its first occupant, John McNabb, an iron moulder, from the developer John McMaster. In 1900 the house was described as four years old, though it was likely no more than a year old at that time. Numbers 13 to 37 — all two-storey houses and yards — were each valued at £8, slightly less than the higher-valued numbers 1 to 11 further north. The house contained three bedrooms and was fitted with gas. The weekly rent was five shillings and the estimated construction cost was £76.

The 1901 census records John McNabb living in the house with his wife and a month-old daughter. A succession of tenants followed: James Hanna, postman (1905); John Balfour, joiner (1908); Joseph Smith, brass founder at the shipyard (1910, and present at the 1911 census, living with his wife and one-year-old daughter); P. Woods, joiner (1912); James Aicken, French polisher (1913); J. McCurry, clerk (1915); Robert Calvert, clerk (1916); John Clarke, riveter (1934); and T. Robinson, labourer and blacksmith (1938).

The Robinson family was forced to vacate the house during the Belfast Blitz. Four air raids struck Belfast during April and May 1941, during which over half of the city's housing stock was damaged. McMaster Street itself was not destroyed, but the area was targeted in raids on the nights of 7–8 April and 4–5 May 1941. The 1942 street directory records that most houses in the street, including number 13, had been vacated, most probably as a result of fire damage. By 1943 the majority of residents, including the Robinsons, had returned. By 1944 the house had been taken over by the Bruce family, who remained in residence until at least 1980.

In the 1970s, redevelopment led to the demolition of many other terraces in the surrounding 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.

Number 13 has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street and is of local historical interest.