7 College Gardens, Belfast

7 College Gardens is a late Victorian end-of-terrace town house, three storeys tall and double-fronted, built in 1877 to designs by the architect William Batt. It forms the eastern end of a symmetrical block of four houses — numbers 7 to 10 — with number 7 mirrored in plan and elevation by number 10 at the opposite gable end, and the narrower numbers 8 and 9 arranged between them. The house sits at the eastern end of College Gardens, a tree-lined street of similarly scaled town houses running between Malone Road and Lisburn Road, within the Queens Conservation Area. The buildings face south, overlooking the grounds of Methodist College.

The building was constructed for merchant John H. Atkinson, on one of the building plots in what was advertised at the time as a "healthy and fashionable locality" suitable for "high-class" residences. Atkinson himself was the first occupant; by the 1901 census his household comprised his wife Hannah, three grown-up children, three domestic servants, a boarder, and two house guests, with the house recorded as a first-class dwelling with 16 rooms in use by the family. Around 1915, E. A. Boas of the Loopbridge Weaving Company took up residence, followed around 1927 by Professor P. T. Crymble, a surgeon, who remained until around 1990. At some point thereafter, probably in the early 1980s, the house was converted to student accommodation, which remains its current use. The plan form has been altered slightly to accommodate this change, but much of the original interior fabric survives.

The roofs are covered in natural slate (Bangor Blue) with black clay ridge tiles. The main roof carries a large red brick chimney centred on the gable, with a corbelled cap formed in brick specials and eight circular red clay pots; a similar chimney at the opposite side — shared with number 8 — has sixteen pots. A smaller red brick chimney centred on the gable of the rear return has two octagonal yellow clay pots. Projecting stone eaves are combined with corbelled brick specials featuring roll-edged dentils on cogging and stretcher courses; a similar corbelled brick verge detail is carried across the base of each chimney. The rainwater goods are cast iron to the south and uPVC to the north and return.

The main walls are red brick laid in Flemish bond, with blue brick string courses and alternating soldier courses. Windows throughout are single-glazed double-hung sliding sashes with 1/1 panes in the main building and 2/2 panes in the return, unless otherwise noted.

The front elevation faces south and is symmetrical and well proportioned, with a central entrance flanked by two projecting bays. The bay to the left (west) is squared and runs the full height of the building, with two windows per floor; it is shouldered at second-floor level and terminates in a hipped roof with a decorative cast iron rail and finials to the platform ridge. The bay to the right (east) is canted, two storeys tall, and has a lead roof. A projecting base plinth of rubble stone with a chamfered blue brick top runs along the front. Dressed sandstone cills and lintels are continued as two string courses of blue brick with a red course between them; reveals are stop-chamfered.

The central entrance is a round arch formed in alternating red and blue soldier courses in threes, with a dressed sandstone hood mould and label stops carved with foliage detail; the base and capitals are also carved with foliage. Plain square-headed panelled timber double doors are flanked by grey marble colonnettes with dressed sandstone capitals, collar, and base set on toothed quoins; a plain fanlight sits above the doors. The alternating blue and red brick soldier course pattern is repeated as segmental relieving arches to the windows above the door and at ground and first floor in the squared bay, with hoods formed in angled blue bricks. The ground floor window in the middle of that bay has leaded glass to the lower sash. Polychromatic brick detailing and sandstone embellishment to both the front façade and gable end make this a good example of late Victorian domestic architecture.

The rear elevation to the north overlooks Elmwood Mews and is largely symmetrical, with a two-storey gabled return placed centrally. A flat-roofed stair enclosure sits to the left. On either side of the return there is one window at each of ground and first floor with 2/2 panes, and three windows at second floor with 1/1 panes. The detailing is much plainer than the front: shallower stone cills, red brick soldier courses above windows, and projecting headers at the eaves. The gable end of the return has a brick chimney, clipped eaves, and a single window offset to the right at first floor level; it is otherwise blank. The flat-roofed stair enclosure has one casement window at each floor above ground — metal-framed at first floor and timber-framed at second.

The east elevation is made up of three parts: the gable end of the main building, the flat-roofed stair enclosure, and the side elevation of the return. The gable end, while less formal than the front, is detailed similarly, with blue brick string courses, hood moulds, and sandstone cills and lintels. There are three openings at each of ground and first floor (the middle opening at ground floor is bricked up) and two windows at second floor. A tall red brick chimney with a two-stage stack and corbelled eaves on scrolled brick-special brackets is centred on the ridge. The bricked-up opening at the middle of the ground floor probably led to an original glass conservatory, which is shown in Batt's illustration of 1878 published in the Irish Builder; the footprint of this conservatory also appears on Ordnance Survey maps up to the 1920s. The ground floor window to the left (south) has leaded glass to the lower sash; the one to the right has obscured glass. At second floor, timber casement windows are centred on the gable, with the right-hand window offset from its original position. The stair enclosure has one opening per floor, not vertically aligned, all with concrete lintels and cills: a flush painted door at ground, a small single-glazed timber casement with a top-hung night vent at first floor, and a similar metal-framed window at second floor; lighter brick at the uppermost level suggests a later addition. A uPVC gutter on rise-and-fall brackets discharges to a uPVC downpipe.

The return's side elevation is plainly detailed in the same manner as the rear elevation, with three windows at ground floor and two at first floor, informally arranged.

The west elevation is abutted by number 8; the west face of the return is detailed to match the east face. There are two windows at ground floor with 2/2 panes, a flush modern door between them, and two windows at first floor with 1/1 panes, all offset to the right and informally arranged. Evidence of a former door survives to the left, now bricked up with its soldier-coursed header remaining.

To the rear there is a two-storey gabled return built at half-landing level, a flat-roofed three-storey stair enclosure (raised from an earlier two-storey version) at the re-entrant angle of the return, and a separate single-storey building in the rear yard dating from around the 1960s.

The setting adds considerably to the character of the building within the Queens Conservation Area. To the front, stone entrance steps and dwarf walling enclose a lawned garden with mature hedging on the south side; a gate opens to College Gardens with a tarmac path to the side of the house. The gable end overlooks the access lane to Elmwood Mews, a shared alley running the full length of College Gardens and connecting to Elmwood Avenue. The hedging to the front returns eastward and joins a red brick wall with a rubble-stone base, taller at the north end, divided into five equal segmental arches formed in three alternating soldier courses of red and blue brick with angled blue brick hoods and a precast concrete coping. To the rear yard, the boundary wall dividing the yard from number 8 and running along the south boundary is of red brick in English Garden Wall bond with a rounded terracotta cap, missing in part; a small section near the south-east corner has been replaced with smooth modern brick. Within the yard, on the reverse side of that modern brick, is a square roofless brick enclosure. Lean-to outhouses with an artificial slate roof, red brick walling, and painted sheeted timber doors stand along the reverse side of the south boundary wall, in line with the return.

The land on which College Gardens stands was historically one of a series of strip farms running from what are now Malone Road and University Road to the Bog Meadows, probably laid out in the early 17th century. Its integrity was broken up by the cutting of Lisburn Road in 1816–19 and the construction of the Ulster Railway in 1837–39. Around the same time, improved security of tenure from the Donegall estate led to the gentrification of what remained of these farms, with the building of small country villas — many of them older houses upgraded — and the laying out of small demesnes within the former farm plots. The land immediately north and south of College Gardens belonged to one such villa, known as Vermont, a house pre-dating 1770, possibly rebuilt or enlarged around 1815 and enlarged again in the 1840s, on that occasion by John Riddell, a Belfast ironmonger. The construction of Queen's College a short distance to the north-east in 1845 triggered the suburbanisation of the area. In 1865 Vermont itself was sold for the construction of another educational establishment — Methodist College — which was completed in 1868. A new private avenue was laid out on the lower ground immediately to the north, with building plots on the northern side. Development proceeded from the eastern end: numbers 1 to 6 were built in 1871, numbers 7 to 18 in 1877, numbers 33 and 34 in 1879, numbers 19 to 22 in 1881, numbers 23 to 26 in 1882, and numbers 27 to 32 in 1883.

Number 7 College Gardens was listed in September 1979. A listed building consent application was submitted in June 2006 to replace the roof and rainwater goods and to replace the sash windows to the rear. Grant aid was awarded in 2011 for repair works to the front windows, stonework, brickwork, and rainwater goods.