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

13 Malone Place is a two-storey, two-bay Victorian mid-terrace dwelling built around 1850, located off the Lisburn Road adjacent to Sandy Row, approximately one mile south of Belfast city centre. It forms part of an original terrace that retains its general character, though some historic features were lost following refurbishment of the terrace around 2000. Its intact external appearance makes it a good surviving example of housing of this type, and it adds significant value to the group as a whole while making a positive architectural contribution to the character of the area.

The house is square in plan with a two-storey rear return. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with clay ridge tiles, replacement galvanised steel rainwater goods, and a red-brick chimney. The walls are of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with a replacement projected smooth rendered plinth course and a corbelled eaves course. Windows are timber sliding sash with horns, painted masonry cills, and flat arches. The replacement timber panelled front door has a fixed rectangular overlight and is flanked by replacement surrounds and a canopy.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged. At ground floor level, the door sits to the left with a single window to the right; two windows occupy the first floor. The left gable abuts 15 Malone Place, and the right gable abuts 11 Malone Place. The rear elevation is also asymmetrically arranged, though the view is largely obscured. The right bay is abutted by a replacement subservient red-brick two-storey return.

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, and a small park enclosed by gated railings. On the opposing side of the Lisburn Road stands the University Road Moravian Church. The former Maternity Hospital lies to the west, with a large modern apartment block to the north.

The terrace was built in at least two phases. The earlier part, including number 13, dates from the late 1840s, with further houses added in the early 1860s. The site, at the bottom of Sandy Row, lay well outside the urban area of Belfast until the 1850s, with Sandy Row itself probably following a route established in medieval times. On the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832 to 1833, a small structure is shown on the site, possibly associated with the Malone turnpike then situated at this junction, but the area was otherwise little developed, consisting mostly of housing along the major routes into Belfast.

Industrial activity gradually spread westwards, and by the time the terrace was built, it stood among a mixed-use landscape of factories, brickfields, housing, larger mansions, and much open ground. The most prominent structure in the area was the Union Workhouse and Fever Hospital, dating from 1841 and 1849 respectively, and several of the terrace's inhabitants were employed there at various times.

Annotations by Brett on the 1850 Hodges and Smith map, on which the terrace makes its first appearance, record that 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 the proprietor of a linen business. Gaffikin is commemorated in the name of Gaffikin Street, which runs to the rear of Malone Place. The terrace does not appear in the street directory of 1846 to 1847 but is listed in the subsequent 1850 edition, giving a likely construction date of the late 1840s for numbers 9 to 19.

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 built together as a development by Arthur Gaffikin and then sold on, or that the land was sold by him as individual building plots. In Griffith's Valuation of 1860, Sarah Warnock is listed as landlady, with the houses valued at £10 and dimensions recorded. The houses were advertised in the Belfast Newsletter of 1857 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."

Numbers 21 to 29 were built between 1860 and 1863 by property developer Moses Tate, and were valued slightly higher than the earlier houses at £11, with number 29 at £12; these valuations were later reduced in 1888 to £10 and £11 respectively. The Belfast Newsletter of 1862 noted that "a number of respectable houses have lately been built on the above Ground and others are in progress of erection." Further building land in the area was offered by Arthur Gaffikin, and four slightly larger houses were subsequently built on the far side of Blondin Street between 1870 and 1877. These were later taken over as the Midnight Mission Rescue Home, a refuge for so-called fallen women of the area. The home subsequently catered for unmarried mothers and became a maternity hospital. The 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, ceased to be used for maternity services after 1981, and has remained the property of the Health Trust.

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 each house having a rear return and outbuildings in the yard. A subsequent edition from the period 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 of the terrace's residents.

The houses appear to have been home to people of varying social standing, mostly from the skilled manual, clerical, and supervisory classes. Many trades and skills are represented, though a large number of residents were employed in some aspect of the textile industry, whether in cloth manufacture or as drapers, tailors, or in related ancillary trades. The Belfast Newsletter provides occasional glimpses into the less respectable side of life in the terrace. In 1867, Jane Crosbey of number 17 was summonsed to appear in court on a charge of disorderly conduct in the public street, following information received by magistrates "as to the character of the house she kept." In October and November 1876, a story ran across several weeks in the Newsletter when a boarder at number 23 was accused of stealing a top coat, umbrella, watch, chain, and £1.10s from a man staying overnight — a crime significant enough to attract sustained coverage, suggesting how unusual such an event was in mid-Victorian Belfast. By the time the 1901 and 1911 censuses provide a fuller picture, most of the houses were occupied by large extended families of the respectable skilled working class, rarely able to afford a servant, and where teenage children were often contributing wages to the household.

The houses were frequently renumbered during the latter decades of the 19th century, making it at times difficult to identify individual residents. As far as can be determined, number 13 was occupied in 1850 by Thomas Wilson, followed by John McAllister, clerk (1852), and Joseph Archer, draper. Subsequent occupiers included Mary Archer and Thomas World (1860), Mrs Welsh (1861), William Edgar, clerk (1863 to 1864), and John Johnston, travelling clerk. In 1869 the contents of the house were auctioned, the advertisement conveying a sense of a comfortable establishment: furnishings comprised "Tables, chairs, sofa, pianoforte, sewing machine by Singer, carpets, iron bedsteads, feather bed and bolsters, dress tables, dress glasses, towel rail, fenders and fire irons, kitchen tables, sofa-chairs, cooking utensils &c." Robert McGeagh, draper, was the next occupier, followed by James Aird, rent agent (1877), David Briggs (1881), John Ward, storekeeper (1884 to 1890), Robert Carlisle, draper (1895), and F Davis, labourer (1896 to 1897). Coachman James Meharg was resident from 1899 and is listed in the 1901 census together with his wife and five children, four of whom were employed — one as a builder's clerk, another as a grocer's assistant, with the occupations of the remaining two being illegible in the record. David G Trimble is also recorded as resident in 1901, and in the 1911 census his widow Sarah, from Armagh, remained in the house with her three adult children, her sons working as a commercial traveller in printing type and machinery and as a bookkeeper respectively. Clerk John Trimble was resident in 1918.