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

50 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay terraced house in East Belfast, built around 1896–1908 as part of a late Victorian working-class street. It was developed by John McMaster and designed by J. Frazer and Son, a practice active from the 1890s into the early 20th century who also designed comparable terraced streets elsewhere in Belfast, including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place.

The house sits at the south end of the east terrace block, facing west onto McMaster Street, and shares group value with the other listed buildings in the street. It forms part of what survives as a remarkably complete late Victorian terraced street — one that escaped both the Luftwaffe raids of 1941, which caused serious destruction to residential terraces along the nearby Newtownards Road, and the widespread demolition that swept through the Ballymacarrett area during redevelopments of the 1970s. The street was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment in 1994.

EXTERIOR

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and a red brick chimney stack at the south side. Rainwater goods are painted ogee-profile cast iron, supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course over an ovolo-moulded corbel course. The walls are laid in English garden-wall bond — red brick with alternating courses of headers and stretchers — with two polychromatic brick string courses, one of which forms a continuous brick and sill course at first-floor level. Rear walls are painted smooth render.

The principal (west) elevation has an entrance door at the left, accessed via a concrete threshold, with a window to its right at ground floor. Two windows at first floor are offset slightly to the right. All window and door openings are camber-headed, with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and projecting masonry sills. As of 2013, the original windows had been partially replaced: the first-floor window on the principal elevation is now uPVC, and the ground-floor window is a timber casement. Otherwise, windows are replacement square-headed, horizontally divided 1/1 timber sliding sashes. The front door is a replacement timber panelled door with a square-headed transom light above.

The north gable abuts No. 48 McMaster Street. The south gable abuts No. 52 McMaster Street. The rear (east) elevation was only partially visible at the time of survey: the ground floor on the right is abutted by a two-storey extension with a pitched roof, constructed with planning permission in 2004 following conservation area criteria. The exposed section at the left has a single window at each floor. The extension's south elevation has a replacement door at the left flanked by a window at the right, with two windows at first floor. The east gable and north elevation of the extension are blank.

SETTING

The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs. The street was formerly cobbled and is now largely laid in concrete, with small cobbled areas at each end. Original lamp posts and electric lighting — formerly gas lights — remain in place, as does the original tiled street signage at the north and south ends of the street. A narrow entry running north–south between the back yards of McMaster Street and Lendrick Street gives access to the rear. The enclosed rear yard is bounded by high-level stretcher-bonded modern red brick walling, with a painted, vertically-sheeted timber entrance door at the centre. The street narrows as it approaches Major Street to the south, a consequence of the wedge-shaped plot of land originally owned by John McMaster: as the terraces were built progressively southward the plots became narrower and the gardens smaller, meaning No. 50 has a noticeably smaller yard than houses at the top of the street.

ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER

The terrace is notable for its polychromatic brick detailing — string courses, chamfered reveals, and voussoirs — combined with the consistent use of camber-headed window openings. These features are characteristic of J. Frazer and Son's approach and give the street its coherent late Victorian character.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE

McMaster Street was built close to the Harland and Wolff shipyards and the ropework factories that were the principal employers in the area. The parlour houses were among the first late Victorian industrial terraces in Belfast to be constructed to new housing and planning regulations specifically designed to raise living standards for working-class people. They were supplied with running water and flushable toilets — made possible by a new city drainage system — and piped gas lighting, both of which distinguished them from the more squalid housing typical of early Victorian Belfast. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s.

The eastern terrace (Nos. 16–52, including No. 50) was not built until 1908, a decade after the western terrace and the lower numbers on the east side were completed in 1898–99. The first recorded occupant of No. 50 was Mr David McIlveen, who took possession in 1908 when the house was valued at £8 and owned by John McMaster. By the time of the 1911 Census, Mr James Hunter was in residence, employed as an engine fitter in the shipyards; the Census Building Return described the house as a second-class dwelling consisting of seven rooms. Hunter remained at the address until at least 1935. By 1940, Mrs Rachel Hunter — either his widow or daughter — was in possession. She vacated by 1950, when a Mrs Samson took over; her son William Samson later lived there into the 1970s, working as a shipwright in the yards.

The rateable value of the property was £8 from 1908 through to 1930, rising to £11 in the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935, and to £12 in 1956, where it remained until the end of that revaluation in 1972. Following John McMaster's ownership, the street passed to an L. McMaster (relationship unknown), as recorded in the post-war revaluation.

No. 50 McMaster Street was listed in 1987 along with the rest of the terrace. In 2004, the Belfast Town Planning Committee granted permission for the sympathetic two-storey rear return that is now in place.