290 Tennent Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT13 3GG

290 Tennent Street is a three-storey terraced house of brick construction, built between 1907 and 1909 in the Shankill area of Belfast. It was designed by the Belfast architectural partnership of Robert Hill and Edwin Kennedy, and was constructed by the Edenderry Spinning Company, whose mill stood immediately to the west of the site. The building was delisted on 21 August 2015, having been assessed as no longer of special architectural or historic interest due to the loss of historic fabric and inappropriate incremental changes, though it retains significance as part of a group demonstrating Arts and Crafts detailing.

The house is asymmetrical in plan, with two bays to the main elevation and accommodation arranged over two storeys with an attic. It faces east onto Tennent Street, is rectilinear on plan, and has a two-storey gabled return to the rear along with a single-storey lean-to structure and an internal yard. The roof is pitched and clad in red clay tiles, with roll-moulded red clay ridge tiles. There is a single brick chimney with moulded detail on the principal face, topped by tall clay pots with a rosette motif. A timber-framed dormer window with clay tile cheeks serves the attic, and there is a central skylight with a glazing bar to the rear roof slope.

Half-round cast-iron rainwater goods survive at the eaves of the main elevation, including a decorative box hopper to the right; the remaining rainwater goods are uPVC replacements. The ground floor of the principal elevation is faced in Flemish bonded brick, while the first floor is finished in painted roughcast render; a brick plinth runs to the canted bay window. The rear walling is in English Garden Wall bond brick, with roughcast render to the first floor and decorative terracotta vents throughout.

Windows are a combination of timber sash and casement types, with flat arch heads and offset brick sills; some concrete sills are present to the rear. The principal elevation has two openings at ground floor level. The front door is a replacement timber door with glazing bars, set within a segmental-arch chamfered rebated surround and sheltered by a flat-roof timber canopy carried on a timber bracket. To the right of the entrance is a canted bay window with three vertical sliding sash windows and a re-covered hipped roof. A central timber casement window with timber-sheeted external shutters sits alongside.

The south elevation abuts a listed building (the adjoining property in the terrace), and the north elevation abuts the neighbouring terrace house. To the rear, the west elevation is abutted by the two-storey pitched-roof return to the right; the south cheek of the return is blank, and the west gable has a central replacement uPVC window at first floor level. The single-storey lean-to structure at ground floor — formerly the coal shed — has been re-roofed and partially rebuilt, with a window inserted to the west using a concrete lintel and sill. A rear boundary wall extends northward to enclose the internal yard, which is accessed through a timber-sheeted and braced door. The principal rear elevation has a central window at ground and first floor levels, with roughcast render to the first floor and an attic window to the left above the return.

The house forms part of Edenderry Terrace, a group of similar houses (listed together as a group) built in stages between 1907 and 1909. The area had developed rapidly during the mid-19th century as a result of the thriving linen industry and its expanding workforce. The fourth edition Ordnance Survey map (surveyed 1920–31) shows the terrace on what had previously been an undeveloped part of the Edenderry flax spinning mill complex. The Annual Revisions of 1906–15 record the house and yard as added in 1909 at a rateable value of £14. The 1911 Census records the first occupant as Albert German, who shared the house's eight rooms with his wife and five daughters. The property first appeared in the 1910 Street Directory as No. 3 Edenderry Gardens, before being renumbered as part of Tennent Street in subsequent decades. By the first and second General Revaluations of 1935, the value of the house and garden had risen to £20, with a Thomas McLaughlin recorded as occupier.

The house was designed to embody the standards of early 20th-century terrace housing reform: intended for single-family occupation, it offered a rear yard accessible via a passage at the front, generous windows to the main elevation, and the modern amenities of the period — a significant improvement over earlier back-to-back housing that lacked drainage, water supply, or rear access. Architecturally, the house reflects Arts and Crafts movement influence in its dormers, bay windows, roughcast render, and irregular roofline, placing it toward the end of Belfast's second great building phase, as noted by architectural historian Paul Larmour.

The Edenderry Spinning Company retained ownership of the property until at least 1972. The spinning mill itself continued to operate on the site to the rear until 1988, after which the land was redeveloped as an industrial and business park. Some late 20th-century repairs and alterations are noted on the heritage file.

The house sits on the western side of Tennent Street, between the Crumlin and Shankill Roads. To the front, a small newly paved garden is enclosed by a rebuilt half-height brick wall and a cast-iron gate facing Tennent Street. To the rear, a long narrow garden plot runs westward to the boundary wall. A paved walkway extends along the rear of all properties in the terrace, between the garden plots and the rear elevations, though this has been sealed with locked gates to the south. To the west, the site of the former Edenderry Spinning Mill is now occupied by a mixed-use business park and apartment complex. Crumlin Road Presbyterian Church stands to the north-east at the corner of Crumlin Road and Tennent Street.