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

25 Malone Place is a two-storey, two-bay Victorian mid-terrace dwelling built around 1860, forming part of the latter half of a terrace located off the Lisburn Road, adjacent to Sandy Row, approximately one mile south of Belfast city centre. The house sits on a square plan with a two-storey rear return. While the exterior has retained its general character, some historic features of interest were lost during refurbishment of the terrace. The interior is generally intact, retaining much of the original joinery and plasterwork.

Exterior

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles, a red-brick chimney with clay pots, replacement galvanised steel rainwater goods, and a roof-light to the rear pitch. The walls are of red brick laid to Flemish bond, with a projected smooth rendered plinth course and yellow-brick eaves courses. Windows are 1/1 timber sliding sash with horns, set within yellow-brick flat arches above painted masonry cills. The front door is a replacement timber door with an overlight, flanked by panelled pilasters that rise to a pair of foliated consoles supporting a replacement canopy.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged: at ground floor level a door sits to the left with a single window to the right; the first floor has two windows. The left gable abuts number 27 Malone Place and the right gable abuts number 23.

The rear elevation is also asymmetrically arranged, with single windows at ground and first floor to the right. The ground-floor window retains a rolled and coloured leaded lower sash. The yard is enclosed by a corrugated plastic cover abutting the facade between ground and first floor levels. To the left, the main block is abutted by a subservient two-storey return with lower eaves and ridge levels, with timber sliding sash windows at first floor and a replacement kitchen window at ground floor. The gable end and right cheek of the return are blank, and are further abutted by a single-storey toilet and ash-bunker.

Setting

The terrace faces directly onto a narrow street. The opposite side of the street is bounded by a rubble masonry wall forming the embankment to the railway, with a small park enclosed by gated railings beyond. On the opposing side of 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.

Historical Background

The terrace was built in at least two phases. The earlier houses, numbers 9 to 19, date from the late 1840s, appearing in the 1850 street directory but not the 1846–7 edition. Numbers 21 to 29, including number 25, were built between 1860 and 1863 by property developer Moses Tate. A further four slightly larger houses were subsequently built on the far side of Blondin Street between 1870 and 1877.

The site at the bottom of Sandy Row lay well outside the urban area of Belfast until the 1850s, Sandy Row itself probably following a route of medieval origin. On the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–3 a small structure is shown on the site, possibly associated with the Malone turnpike situated at that junction, but the surrounding area was otherwise little developed, consisting mostly of housing along the major routes into Belfast. By the time the terrace was built, the area comprised a mixed landscape of factories, brick fields, housing, larger mansions and much open ground. The most prominent local structure 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.

The site belonged from 1798 to 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 proprietor of a linen business. Gaffikin is commemorated in the name of Gaffikin Street, which runs to the rear of Malone Place. The terrace was built to the rear of a larger house called Malone Cottage, which faces onto Sandy Row (then known as Malone Road). It is possible that Malone Cottage and Malone Place were developed together by Arthur Gaffikin and then sold on, or that the land was sold as individual building plots.

In Griffith's Valuation of 1860, Sarah Warnock is listed as landlady of the terrace. The original houses were valued at £10 each, and in 1857 were advertised in the Belfast Newsletter 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." The later-built numbers 21 to 29 were valued slightly higher, at £11, with number 29 at £12, though these valuations were later reduced in 1888 to £10 and £11 respectively. The Belfast Newsletter of February 1862 noted that "a number of respectable houses have lately been built on the above Ground and others are in progress of erection."

The first valuation map to show the terrace, dating from around 1860, records ornamental railings and a step to the front of each of the original six houses, with a rear return and outbuildings in the yard of each. A subsequent map edition of around 1860 to 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.

The four houses built beyond Blondin Street were subsequently taken over as the Midnight Mission Rescue Home, a refuge for women of the area described as "fallen," and eventually became a maternity hospital catering for unmarried mothers. Those four 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, though it was no longer used by maternity services after 1981 and has remained in the ownership of the Health Trust.

Residents of the terrace were generally of varying social standing, mostly from the skilled manual, clerical and supervisory classes. Many different trades are represented, though a large number were employed in the textile industry in some form, whether in cloth manufacture or as drapers, tailors or in related trades. 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 where teenage children were present they commonly contributed a wage to the household.

The houses were frequently renumbered during the latter decades of the 19th century, making it at times difficult to trace individual residents. As far as can be determined, number 25 was newly built and vacant in 1860. The first recorded occupier is Thomas World in 1863–4, who had previously lived at number 13 and resided here with his wife and young family. Subsequent occupants included Hugh Petticrew, book-keeper (by 1865); John Rutherford of Foster Green & Co (1870); Joseph Jones, commercial traveller (1877); Robert Dawson, carpenter (1880–90); Isaac Todd, signalman for the Great Northern Railway (1895–6); and from 1899 Robert McNamara, tram foreman, who was recorded in the 1901 census living with his wife, a dressmaker, and a male boarder working as a tram conductor. Later occupiers were James McCune, horsemaster for the tram company (1903); Hugh Ireland, suit cutter (1907); Margaret Jane Pelan, a widow from County Tyrone living on private means with her spinster daughter aged 51, as recorded in the 1911 census; and in 1918 William Rutter, sexton of All Souls' Church, Elmwood Avenue.

The street directories and census records also offer occasional glimpses of the less respectable side of terrace life: in 1867 Jane Crosbey of number 17 was summonsed for being disorderly in a public street, with magistrates having received information "as to the character of the house she kept"; and in October and November 1876 a story ran in the Belfast Newsletter over several weeks when a boarder at number 23 was accused of stealing a top coat, umbrella, watch and chain and £1 10s from a man staying overnight, culminating in a courtroom speech by the defendant and an angry riposte from his wife.

The house remains in use as a domestic dwelling and retains significant group value as part of a good surviving example of Victorian terrace housing of this type, making a positive architectural contribution to the character of the area.