43 Sunnyside Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT7 3EX

A terraced two-storey redbrick house with attic dormer, built around 1870. The house forms part of a terrace of six similar dwellings lining the north side of Sunnyside Street, developed by Thomas Fitzpatrick on land he had purchased. Fitzpatrick was a remarkable working sculptor responsible for fine stone carving on many of Belfast's notable buildings, including the Harbour Office and the Merchant Hotel. He began his career as a sculptor in partnership with his brother William in the 1850s, before becoming a general building contractor in the 1860s and remaining active until the 1890s or later.

The house is L-shaped on plan facing south. The roof is pitched artificial slate with synthetic ridge tiles and a profiled redbrick chimneystack to the east, capped with terracotta pots and featuring a lead-lined raised verge. A wall-head dormer is shared with the adjoining house (No. 45), constructed with timber bargeboard, redbrick walling, and a diminutive square-headed window opening.

The front elevation is two windows wide and faced in redbrick laid in Flemish bond with painted sandstone quoins to the east end and a painted sandstone plinth course. A painted stone eaves course with plastic guttering sits above a polychromatic brick frieze. The windows are square-headed openings with painted masonry lintels and sills, now fitted with replacement uPVC windows. The focal point of the front elevation is a decorative painted masonry doorcase positioned to the left, adjoining that of the neighbouring house. The doorcase comprises a square-headed door opening with a replacement timber panelled door and rectangular overlight, flanked by plain pilasters on plinth blocks. Oversized foliate console brackets, the western one shared with the adjoining house, support a shared lintel cornice and decorative segmental stone panel above. The front garden is enclosed by replacement steel railings on a brick wall and finished with cobblelock paving.

Extensive refurbishment has resulted in the loss of much original fabric, though the house retains its overall composition and decorative detailing. The rear elevation is abutted by a shared two-storey return with painted cement rendered walling, uPVC windows, and masonry sills. A small enclosed rear yard with a screen wall opens into the rear garden. The west side elevation is abutted by the adjoining house (No. 45), and the east side by house No. 41.

The terrace was developed in a district that remained largely open and sparsely built until the latter decades of the nineteenth century. The newly laid out Sunnyside Street saw few houses built before the early twentieth century, but the area has since become intensively developed, and what was once an isolated row of dwellings has been absorbed by Belfast's continued expansion. The terrace first appears in valuation records as unfinished houses and yards in 1869, with the buildings completed and valued at £15 each in 1870. According to surviving papers of the Fitzpatrick Brothers, the houses were then sold in pairs: Numbers 43 and 45 were sold to Thomas Neill, who occupied one and let out the other; Numbers 51 and 53 were sold to Samuel McCormick, who followed the same arrangement. The ownership of the middle pair is less certain, as they appear to have passed through several landlords in quick succession but were both let out. The occupants were typically comfortable, employed persons such as commercial travellers, clerks, and shopkeepers—rarely able to afford servants but generally engaged in supervisory and clerical work rather than manual labour.

The occupancy history of No. 43 is documented as follows: James McBernie (1870), Thomas Neill (1877), Samuel Neill (1877), Thomas A Morris, traveller (1880), Abraham Morris, commercial traveller (1884–87), Ann Moneypenny (1892), and Francis H Roughsedge, salesman (1895). At the 1901 census, the occupier was Edwin Bunyar, an Englishman and civil engineer, who lived with his Lancashire wife and five young children. Subsequent occupiers included Mrs Keeley (1905), John Maguire, kilnman (1910, listed as gardener in the 1911 census), Wm McCready, lithographer (1912), John Maguire again (1913), Mrs Margaret McConaty (1929), P O'Toole, RUC (1931), Samuel Lemon (1940), and Charles McGinn (1941), who remained in the house until at least 1980. McGinn was recorded as an engineer in 1949 and a salesman by 1962. The house continues in use as a domestic dwelling.

The house makes a marked contribution to the late nineteenth-century character of Sunnyside Street but is not of sufficient individual interest to warrant listing, either separately or as part of a group.