56 Donegall Pass, Belfast, County Antrim, BT7 1BU

56 Donegall Pass is an early Victorian end-of-terrace townhouse of three storeys and two bays, built around 1845 and forming part of a terrace formerly known as Apsley Place. It stands on Donegall Pass adjacent to St Mary Magdalene Church, south of Belfast city centre and east of Shaftesbury Square. The building has been converted for use as offices and a design studio, with interventions that have been largely sympathetic. It retains much of its historic external fabric and late-Victorian detailing, and although the interior has been slightly modified to suit changing uses, its layout and features of interest have largely survived. The building adds significant value to the listed group of which it forms part, retaining the style, proportions, and detailing of the terrace and contributing positively to its overall historic character.

The plan form is square, with a two-storey rear return and a single-storey modern extension. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with clay ridge tiles, overhanging eaves with timber soffits and paired eaves brackets, and cast-iron rainwater goods comprising semi-circular gutters and circular downpipes. The brick chimneys have replacement clay pots. The main walling is red brick laid to Flemish bond, with ruled-and-lined render to the ground floor and smooth render to the rear elevation. Long-and-short quoins are a notable external feature.

The windows are timber sliding sashes with horns, in 6/6 and 6/3 configurations, set under flat arches with painted masonry cills and a continuous cill line at first-floor level. The principal entrance comprises a four-panelled door with raised-and-fielded bolection moulded panels and a margin-paned overlight, flanked by panelled pilasters rising to foliated console brackets that support a moulded canopy surmounted by stuccowork. Replacement steps lead up to the front door.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged, with the entrance positioned to the right and two windows at each of the ground, first, and second floors. Quoins appear to the left of this elevation. The left gable is blank with quoins to the right and is partially rendered to the left. The rear elevation is also asymmetrically arranged: the left side is abutted by the two-storey return, which has various openings to its west cheek and a landing window above. A single-storey modern extension with a pitched glazed roof abuts the right side of the rear, with first- and second-floor windows above matching the south elevation. The right gable adjoins the neighbouring building at 58–60 Donegall Pass.

The building is set within a terrace that adjoins it to the east. To the front is a paved area used as a private car park; to the rear is a tarmac yard enclosed by a palisade gate. The surrounding area is principally two- and three-storey residential development from various periods. The Former School of Music sits opposite on the south side of the street, and St Mary Magdalene Church stands to the west.

The terrace was built in 1846 in what was then a sparsely developed part of the growing town of Belfast. Donegall Pass had been laid out by the late 18th century across a heavily wooded area used as a deer park by the Donegall family, Belfast's principal landowners at the time. According to Brett, Donegall Pass and the Ormeau Road were laid out as carriage drives through these woodland estates, and it was not until the Donegalls' control over their pleasure grounds began to lessen in the 1820s that permission was given to build in the area. By 1823 the land on the north side of Donegall Pass had become the property of Henry Joy, proprietor of the Belfast Newsletter and an active figure in the political life of the town. The construction of the gas works to the east in 1823 probably contributed to the area's development, but at the time Apsley Place was built in the mid-19th century it was one of only a handful of terrace developments along the Pass to the north, while the territory to the south was largely divided among substantial villas set in spacious grounds.

The developer of the terrace was Thomas Gaffikin (1809–93), a farmer's son and butcher who built several other terraces in south Belfast. Gaffikin lived at Number 70 and later Number 56 Apsley Place from its construction until he moved to a new terrace he had built at Queen's Elms, where he remained for the rest of his life. He subsequently became proprietor of a linen and linen-yarn business and served as a town councillor for Cromac and then St George's Ward. He left an important historical legacy in the form of his 1875 lecture entitled Belfast Fifty Years Ago, which gives a lively impression of the social life of early 19th-century Belfast.

The houses were occupied over the years by a succession of tenants reflecting the range of occupations available to the middle and petty bourgeois classes during Belfast's period of most rapid expansion. Early residents were often wealthy business proprietors or gentlemen, but as the merchant class gradually moved out of Belfast to the more favourable surroundings of North Down and elsewhere, there is a perceptible shift in the tenantry towards the well-to-do petty bourgeoisie. The censuses of 1901 and 1911 reveal that by the early 20th century some tenants were sufficiently wealthy to employ domestic servants, while others supplemented their income by taking in boarders. It appears that the houses were not used as commercial premises until the modern era.

The first resident recorded at Number 56 was a Mrs David in 1850, followed by Thomas Gaffikin himself from 1852 to 1858, and then Rackenham Erskine in 1859. Griffith's Valuation of 1859 records a three-storey house with return and stable, valued at £31, and the associated valuation map shows a wall and gate to the front of the property. Subsequent tenants included John Alexander Arnold, clothier of High Street (1863–4), Major Lundy (1865), William Thompson of J Thompson and Co (1870), William H Taggart, commission merchant (1877), and from 1884 the McCaughey family, whose member L McCaughey was proprietor of the Crown Dining Rooms. Between 1896 and 1897 John Finnegan BA BSc offered university classes from the house.

The 1901 census records eight windows to the front façade and ten rooms, suggesting that dormer windows may have been inserted at roof level at some point, though these are now gone. The occupier at that time was John Campbell, a master handkerchief printer and finisher, who lived with his wife, four adult children, and a boarder who was a wholesale grocer. His eldest son was also a master handkerchief printer and finisher, his younger son an inspector at the National Telephone Company, and his older daughter a dressmaker. By 1911 the house was occupied by widow Elizabeth Alderdice, who lived with her daughter, son, son-in-law, and granddaughter. The daughter worked as a typist, and the son-in-law was an unemployed railway accountant; they had returned from India where their seven-year-old daughter had been born. Two boarders also lived at the house: a sixty-five-year-old stevedore and a twenty-four-year-old assurance superintendent.

The house was subsequently the home of Clare Copley, better known as Ma Copley, a boxing promoter. Boxing was introduced to the Chapel Fields in front of St Malachy's Church in the early 1930s, and Ma Copley, who had moved to Belfast from her native England, was an unmistakeable figure at the bouts. With a large leather bag strapped to her waist she collected the door money herself, and with entrance fees ranging from three old pence to six old pence the fighters' remunerations were described as scanty enough. The City Fathers closed down the venue in 1938, and Ma Copley moved to the Ulster Hall where she introduced regular Wednesday and Saturday fight nights. When she died in 1949 at the age of 84 she received a standing tribute from the hardened Ulster Hall fans. The building is currently in use as offices.