7 College Place North, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 6BE

No. 7 College Place North is an end-of-terrace two-storey red brick house built around 1840, one of a group of four similar houses forming a coherent late-Georgian/early-Victorian terrace in a cul-de-sac to the north of College Square North, Belfast city centre. It is among the very few surviving examples of early 19th-century terraced housing of this scale remaining in the city centre, and the whole group retains much of its historic fabric and character.

The house is rectangular on plan and faces southeast. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. The chimneystack on the south party wall (shared with No. 9) is of profiled brick with terracotta pots. Rainwater goods are cast iron, with guttering carried on iron brackets fixed to a brick eaves course, and a cast-iron downpipe. The walls are red brick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing. Window openings are flat-arched with gauged brick heads, painted sandstone sills, and rendered reveals; the windows themselves are replacement 6-over-6 timber sash windows. The front elevation is two windows wide. The square-headed door opening to the right contains a replacement four-panelled timber door with bolection mouldings and a rectangular overlight; the opening is flanked by large plain console brackets supporting a hood cornice. The door opens onto two concrete steps directly onto the front pavement, and the remains of a plinth wall from the former railed front area survive. The south side elevation is abutted by the adjoining No. 9, and the north side elevation by No. 5. The rear elevation was not inspected at the time of survey.

The terrace forms the northwest side of College Place North at the entrance to an industrial yard. The area was vacant at the time of the first Ordnance Survey map of 1832–33, when Belfast's development was concentrated to the north and southeast. The opening of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in 1814 and the population growth of the Victorian period accelerated the construction of terraced streets to the west of the city centre, and by the time of the second Ordnance Survey map of 1858 the terrace had been built. A Historic Buildings Branch report compiled in 1992 described College Place North as having been erected as mews houses for the servants of the grand houses fronting College Square. Patton noted that the terrace was once closed off at the Killen Street end by a brick wall, and that an opposing terrace on the southwest side, now demolished, once faced it. The terrace stands in the shadow of Neill's factory, originally built during the famine period and remodelled in the 1880s by James Neill.

Griffith's Valuation of 1860 records that Nos. 3–13 College Place North were owned by Thomas McCammon, a tanner, leather merchant and flour miller who operated from a tannery on King Street directly to the north, and who was lessor of a number of other local dwellings. McCammon leased No. 7 to a John Murray, who was employed at a local brewery and was valued at £9. Murray had vacated by 1868, when David Malcolmson, a bakery manager, is recorded in possession. Robert Armstrong, a local miller, took the dwelling in 1877, followed by Robert Beattie, a mechanic, from around 1880; Beattie also occupied the adjoining No. 9. Annual Revisions record a John Reid as occupant from 1881 to around 1900. By the Belfast Revaluation of 1900 the terrace had passed into the ownership of Samuel Gibson, a druggist and general merchant with properties on King Street. The revaluation described No. 7 as a two-storey dwelling of approximately 50 years of age, heated by gas, containing five rooms excluding the kitchen, and let at an annual rent of £17; its rateable value was increased to £10 10s. The 1901 census records John Rickerby (aged 59, Church of Ireland), a police pensioner, residing there with his wife Sarah (aged 53) and their children; the building return classified it as a second-class private dwelling with six inhabited rooms. By 1907 W. H. Alexander, the sexton of the nearby Christ Church on the grounds of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, had taken over. By the 1911 census the Quinn family were in residence and remained so through to the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930. The First General Revaluation of 1935 increased the value to £14 10s., with a Patrick Gunn recorded as owner. By the Second General Revaluation, which ran from 1956 to 1972, the value had risen slightly to £15, with a J. Oliver recorded as occupant.

The terrace was listed in 1977 on the grounds that it represented a rare surviving example of early 19th-century two-storey housing in the area. In the period following listing the houses fell into disrepair through neglect and vandalism, and by the 1990s more than half lay vacant. Neill's original Victorian mill was demolished in 1986–87 and replaced with the current structure. In 1992 Neill's Mill sought the delisting of College Place North with the intention of demolishing the terrace and incorporating the site into the factory; this request was refused. A subsequent renovation project restored the original character of the terrace. The original three-lobe fanlight over the door of No. 7 has been removed, though the glazing bars noted by the architectural historian C. E. B. Brett in 1985 have been retained. Brett described the group as "enchanting little two-storey mid-Georgian houses … real jewels with glazing bars all intact," though the Georgian date he suggested is considered too early; the terrace was most likely built around 1840–50 and was certainly not in existence at the time of the 1832–33 Ordnance Survey. Patton, writing in 1993 at the time of the restoration, described Nos. 3–9 as "an obtuse-angled terrace of two-storey red-brick houses with some surviving three-lobe fanlights over four-panel doors in simple doorcases."