Chilworth Buildings, 104 Stranmillis Road, BELFAST, BT9 5AE

104 Stranmillis Road is an end-terrace house, part of Chilworth Buildings, a unified row of thirteen residential properties built around 1893 to designs by Belfast architect Samuel Patrick Close in the Arts and Crafts style. The houses were erected for McCaw, Stevenson and Orr Ltd, a printing company originally based on Linenhall Street before relocating to Loopbridge Mill on the Castlereagh Road around 1893. This development exemplifies the speculative and incremental residential growth of south Belfast in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The building is a single-bay three-storey structure of red brick construction with a half-timbered attic storey. It is rectangular on plan with a projecting gabled bay to the north elevation. The roof is pitched natural slate with angled terracotta ridge tiles, painted timber fascia supporting uPVC rainwater goods, and bargeboards to the gables with timber finials supported by cavetto timber eaves brackets resting on a moulded brick stringcourse. A red brick wall-head chimneystack with four terracotta pots rises from the east gable.

The walling is red brick laid in English garden wall bond over an offset plinth with two projecting brick string courses. Engaged chamfered brick shafts flank the first-floor windows. Applied Tudor-style timber latticework decorates the gable apexes to the north and west elevations. Windows are generally segmental-headed tripartite 1/1 timber sashes with horns, stone cills, gauged brick surrounds and brick voussoirs; those on the second floor are set within a timber architrave. First-floor windows are arranged in a quadripartite configuration unless otherwise stated. Ground-floor windows have wire-mesh screens to the lower glass panes.

The north elevation features a full-height projecting gabled bay on the left side, flanked to the west by a recessed section plainly detailed except for single windows at each floor on its extreme right. The projecting bay contains groups of windows at each floor; the ground floor has three windows in a group with a fourth set slightly apart to the right. The main entrance is located in the west cheek of the projecting bay, comprising an original six-panelled timber door with plain transom light and cast-iron door furniture, set in a gauged brick surround with sandstone lintel.

The east elevation is abutted by a two-storey red brick return with an external metal staircase leading to a first-floor entrance. This return is plainly detailed with irregularly arranged sliding sash windows set singly and in groups of three. A twentieth-century fire escape is accessed by a metal fire escape mounted on a brick base that forms the street boundary. The exposed section of the main elevation has single windows at ground and first-floor levels. The south elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The west elevation is gabled and contains groups of windows at each floor, detailed as described above.

The building was originally valued at £35 upon completion, higher than the remaining twelve houses in the terrace which were valued at £25 each, reflecting its position as the end property. Early occupants included Arthur Stringer (the first occupant), William Heaney (by 1897), and James Riordan, an agent for the National Cash Registry Company (by 1908). The Forster School of Music occupied the property in 1943, though it had returned to residential use by 1960. The building has been internally subdivided into flats following a planning application approved on 15 June 1988 to convert it into two ground-floor flats and one first-floor maisonette. Despite this subdivision, it remains the only externally intact example within the terrace row.

The property occupies a prominent location within the Stranmillis Conservation Area at the junction of Stranmillis Road and Stranmillis Street, directly opposite St Bartholomew's Church of Ireland and in close proximity to the Ulster Museum and Queens University. It is the northernmost property of the terrace group (No. 104 to No. 128) and forms part of a prominent complex spanning the full block between Stranmillis Street and Ridgeway Street. The building is set back slightly from the street and is bounded by a low red brick boundary wall and mature hedge. The ground falls steeply away to the east, and the ground floor of the return is abutted by a later garage extension. To the rear is an alleyway that spans the terrace row, connecting Stranmillis Street to Ridgeway Street.