45 Malone Road, Belfast

No. 45 Malone Road is a mid-terraced, four-storey, two-bay red brick late Victorian town house, built in 1886–87 to designs by the Botanic Avenue-based architect William Eaton. It forms part of a continuous terrace of nine similar houses originally known as 'Windsor Gardens', running between Malone Avenue and Eglantine Avenue, and collectively numbered 37–53 Malone Road. Together they constitute one of the most impressive terraces within the Malone Road Conservation Area. The group is rectangular on plan, aligned on a north–south axis with gabled ends. No. 45 is currently combined with No. 43 (its immediate neighbour to the north) and used as commercial offices. The two properties are handed to mirror each other in plan and elevation, sitting together at the mid-point of the terrace.

EXTERIOR

The front elevation faces east and is two bays wide, with a full-height bowed bay offset to the left and the entrance to the right. This bowed bay, repeated across all nine houses in the terrace, rises beyond the main eaves and is topped with a conical slate roof, creating the strong rhythmic character for which the terrace is particularly admired. The roof is finished in natural slate with bands of fish-scale slates; red terracotta ridge tiles and finials cap the bowed bay, while black clay ridge tiles run along the main roof. A large red brick chimney is centred on the main roof ridge, with simple corbelled brick coursing to the cap and eight circular yellow clay pots.

The front elevation features a deep painted render base plinth with a chamfered top, projecting moulded cill and string courses, and a textured render plat band at each floor level, all painted. The bowed bay is also finished in textured render, with the exception of some brick header courses between floor levels, incised decoration in the render above the bay windows, and an edge roll moulding. The entrance is framed by a textured render surround to a segmental-headed door set above the plat band, flanked by pink marble colonnettes on dressed sandstone plinths and capitals (painted). A plain fanlight sits above the square-headed, five-panelled timber door; toothed rendered quoins appear below the plat band, and a decorative terracotta panel (painted) sits above the door head. The pink marble colonnettes and terracotta panel motif are repeated on the first- and second-floor windows above the entrance. Cast iron guttering is supported on scrolled terracotta brackets, and a projecting eaves course runs along the front; the bowed bay is further highlighted by a cornice of classical stucco ornamentation beneath the gutter. Two replacement timber sliding sash windows with single-glazed 1-over-1 panes, matched to the originals, have been inserted at second- and third-floor level on the south-facing side of the bay.

The rear (west) elevation faces a shared alley and is plainly detailed: brick walling with soldier-coursed window heads and projecting brick headers to the eaves. A three-storey return projects to the rear at half-landing level, joined to the equivalent return at No. 43 to create a wider gabled return than those found elsewhere in the terrace. This return has a painted timber bargeboard, one timber-framed casement window with concrete head and cill at second-floor level, and is otherwise blank. The ground floor of the main rear elevation has a painted smooth rendered finish. Remaining windows at the rear include uPVC frames at third-floor level and timber sliding sashes with 1-over-1 panes at second floor and 2-over-2 panes at third floor. A further uPVC window sits above the return junction at the uppermost half-landing, alongside a small timber casement with a top-hung night vent. A 'ghost' marking on the west elevation of the return indicates a single-storey gabled abutment, now removed. A cantilevered metal chequer-plate escape deck connects the flat-roofed extension in the yard to No. 43.

The south elevation is abutted by No. 47 Malone Road. The south face of the return has informal fenestration: one remaining timber-framed sliding sash at second-floor level, a flush modern door at first-floor level to the far left, and remaining openings that have been widened with concrete heads and cills and fitted with modern timber-framed casement windows. A projecting boxed timber eaves supports an ogee uPVC gutter. The north elevation is abutted by No. 43, including the return.

A single-storey flat-roofed extension added around 1995, of little historic interest, fills the yard along the south face of the return. A further extension to the return was added around 2007. Walling is red brick in Flemish bond with painted render and stone dressings to the front; a variation of English Garden Wall bond is used to the return elevations. Windows throughout are single-glazed timber sliding sashes with 1-over-1 panes unless otherwise noted; uPVC-framed windows are double glazed. Rainwater goods are cast iron to the front and uPVC to the rear and return. The artificial slate and black ridge tile to the return contrast with the natural slate of the main roof.

SETTING

No. 45 sits set back from the tree-lined street behind a paved front garden bounded by a low rendered wall with a rounded top (no coping) and a galvanised steel tubular rail on the west side of Malone Road. The front garden is surfaced in precast concrete paving slabs with modern quarry-tiled steps serving both entrances to Nos. 43 and 45. A tree stands in the front garden with white pebbles hard-set to the border at the bay. The building sits directly opposite Fisherwick Presbyterian Church, and when viewed from the corner of Chlorine Gardens this aspect is particularly impressive. To the rear, the yard is combined with that of No. 43 to form a car park, bounded by a concrete block wall with a splayed section opening southward to the alley; the wall is topped with palisade fencing and extends further west than the boundaries of the adjoining properties.

INTERIOR

The building has been converted to offices, with substantial alterations to the stairwell and return, resulting in some loss of integrity and plan form. However, the domestic scale remains legible and some fine historic detailing survives internally, contributing to the building's character.

HISTORY

Nos. 37–53 Malone Road were constructed between 1886 and 1888 on the former grounds of Eglantine Hill, a pre-1832 house whose grounds were bounded by Malone and Lisburn Roads to the east and west, and by what are now Malone and Eglantine Avenues to the north and south. The terrace was built for James Johnston, possibly the insurance agent of that name recorded in contemporary directories as operating from Waring Street, Belfast. The whole group appears to have been completed by mid-1888, and all properties are recorded as occupied in the earliest available street directory of 1890.

The first recorded occupant of No. 45 was John Cleaver, the linen merchant and co-founder of the firm Robinson & Cleaver. By 1895, R. F. Kennedy, a bank manager with the National Bank, was in residence, followed by a Mrs. Mackie in 1900. The 1901 census records the building as a first-class dwelling containing 15 rooms, occupied by Mrs. Mackie, her daughter Lizzie Courvoisier, her granddaughter, and a domestic servant. The property was noted as vacant between 1907 and 1910. When the census was taken in April 1911, it was occupied by Anna Matier — then Vice Principal of Victoria College — her aunt Jane Hawthorne, and a domestic servant, Rose Ann McClary; the house is again described as a first-class dwelling, though recorded as having 10–12 rooms rather than the 15 noted a decade earlier. The property was again vacant in 1915. Subsequent occupants included a Mrs. Beck in 1918, G. McDowell ('Manufacturer') in 1925, and Mrs. G. S. Camphill in 1930. After another period of vacancy, the building was in multiple occupancy (four tenants) by 1935, and appears to have remained so until the early 1970s, when it was largely given over to office accommodation. It has remained in office use ever since. The building was listed in November 1991.