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

32 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced house, one of a complete and largely intact street of similar properties in the Ballymacarrett area of East Belfast. The eastern terrace, of which this house forms part (numbers 16 to 52), was constructed in 1908, approximately a decade after the western terrace was built in 1898 and 1899. The whole street was built by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, an architectural practice active from the 1890s into the early twentieth century that also designed comparable terraced streets in Belfast including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place.

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and a red brick chimney stack at the south side. Rainwater goods are ogee-profile cast iron supported on projecting polychromatic brick eaves courses over an ovolo moulded corbel course. The walls are English garden-wall bonded red brick, laid with alternating courses of headers and stretchers, with two polychromatic brick string courses including a continuous brick and sill course at first-floor level. Windows and the entrance door are set within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs and projecting masonry sills. All polychromatic brickwork was at one stage painted, with the exception of the brickwork above the first-floor windows; paint has since been removed from the brickwork throughout, including the plinth, brick chamfered reveals, and camber-headed window reveals.

On the principal west-facing elevation, the entrance door sits to the left and is accessed via a concrete threshold, with a window to its right. At first-floor level there are two windows, offset slightly to the right. The front door is a timber panelled door with a camber-headed transom light, and all windows on the front elevation have been replaced. The north gable is abutted by number 30 McMaster Street. The south gable is abutted by number 34 McMaster Street.

At the rear, the ground floor is abutted on the right by a single-storey lean-to extension that runs from the north boundary wall, with a single window to the right; the first floor has two windows. The lean-to extension has modern brick walling, a timber fascia, and uPVC rainwater goods.

The land on which McMaster Street stands was originally wedge-shaped, meaning that as the terraces were built progressively towards the southern end of the street the houses became narrower and their gardens smaller. The parlour houses were among the first late Victorian industrial dwellings in Belfast to be built under new housing and planning regulations specifically intended to improve living standards for working-class residents. They were among the first such terraces in the city to be supplied with running water and flushable toilets, made possible by the construction of a new city drainage system, and gas was piped into each house for lighting. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s. The street is located close to the Harland and Wolff shipyards, and many of its early residents worked in the nearby shipyards or ropework and tobacco factories. The 1911 Census records that the first occupant of number 32, Mrs Jane McKibben, had a son Stewart apprenticed as an iron turner in the yards and a daughter Mary employed as a tobacco stripper in the local tobacco works. The Census Building Return of 1911 described number 32 as a second-class dwelling consisting of seven rooms.

The first occupant, Mrs Jane McKibben, took possession of the house in 1908 when the eastern terrace was completed. In that year the house was valued at £8 and was let by John McMaster, the landowner. Jane McKibben continued to live there until her death in the 1930s, after which her son Stewart came into possession. By the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 the value of the property had risen to £11. Following the Second World War revaluation, ownership of the street had passed from John McMaster to an L. McMaster, and number 32 was by then occupied by a Mrs Hunter, with the value increased to £12. By 1960 a Mr A. Hotson had taken possession and his family continued to live at the house until at least 1990.

McMaster Street survived the 1941 Belfast Blitz, during which the Luftwaffe raided the shipyards causing widespread destruction to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road. It also survived the extensive redevelopment of the Ballymacarrett area in the 1970s, when many comparable red brick terraces were demolished. Number 32 was listed in 1987 together with the rest of the terrace. In 1994 the neighbourhood was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment, with criteria established to ensure that any additions to the terrace remain in keeping with the original design and fabric of the street.

The house is set at the middle of the east terrace block, facing directly onto McMaster Street. The street, formerly cobbled, is now largely concrete with small cobbled areas at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs and original lamp posts and electric lighting (formerly gas lights). Original tiled street signage survives at the north and south ends of the street. The rear elevation is enclosed by high-level stretcher-bonded modern red brick walling with a painted vertically-sheeted timber entrance door at the centre, accessed via a narrow entry running north to south between the back yards of Lendrick Street and McMaster Street. The street narrows towards Major Street at the south.

Number 32 has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street and is of local interest.