589 Ormeau Road, Belfast

589 Ormeau Road, Belfast

A two or three-storey red-brick late Victorian terraced house, built around 1860 and located on the Ormeau Road just south of its intersection with Ravenhill Road, approximately 3 kilometres from Belfast city centre. It forms part of a terrace of seven similar houses set on the west side of the Ormeau Road.

The house is rectangular on plan with a two-storey rectangular return and enclosed yard to the rear. The main roof is covered in natural slate with metal ogee guttering to the front and uPVC guttering to the rear. Walls are constructed of smooth red clay brick.

The front elevation faces east. To the right is a white uPVC door with an oval-shaped glazed centre panel and glazed overlight with plain glazing, set within a square-headed opening with a masonry hood supported on red-brick piers. To the left is a uPVC top-hung double-glazed window. At first-floor level are two similar windows with bottom-hung opening sections. Window openings have smooth painted plaster reveals and are square-headed with soldier-course headers. The brickwork is laid in Flemish bond, and there is a series of slightly projecting decorative polychromatic brick courses at eaves level, painted white. A replacement red-brick chimney stack with red clay pots sits on the left-hand side.

The rear elevation faces west. The main house at first-floor level has a square-headed window with painted timber top-hung single-glazed window and soldier-course headers on the right-hand side. The original two-storey return occupies the left-hand side. The rear of the main house is red-brick, partly painted white, whilst the rear return is finished in smooth render. The south elevation of the return is blank at first-floor level. The west gable elevation of the return adjoins a single-storey yard wall finished in painted smooth render. At first-floor level on the left-hand side of the return gable is a square-headed window opening with a painted timber top-hung single-glazed window. An enclosed yard has a square-headed doorway with painted timber boarded door. Walls to the house are red-brick in English garden-wall bond. There is a rooflight on the main roof, with uPVC rainwater goods and soil stacks to the rear.

The north elevation abuts no. 587 Ormeau Road, and the south elevation abuts no. 591 Ormeau Road. A small front garden is set behind sandstone kerbing and brick walling, painted white, with a concrete path and a set of replacement painted concrete piers supporting a small painted timber gate. The rear of the terrace is bounded by a laneway with a long narrow garden extending westward.

The windows have been replaced with uPVC double-glazed windows to the front (top and bottom hung) and painted timber top-hung windows to the rear. The original door and front boundary have also been replaced.

Historical Development

This house, together with its three matching neighbours to the north (nos. 583–87 Ormeau Road, originally known as 'Belvoir Place'), was built between 1858 and circa 1864. The houses do not appear on the Ordnance Survey map of 1858 but are shown in the 1865 street directory. They are possibly recorded as original entries in the valuation book commencing in 1862, though a newspaper advertisement from March 1866 describes them as "those four new two-storey houses... comfortably finished [with] neat gardens in front and rear, and in a most healthy locality, within half an hour's walk from Belfast and close to the Parish Church and Meeting-House," suggesting construction around 1864. The terrace was probably developed by Thomas Courtney, listed as the immediate lessor in the valuation book. In 1871, Courtney added the matching house to the south (no. 591) and a pair of taller dwellings beyond (nos. 593–95).

The sequence of occupants at no. 589 is documented as follows: William Courtenay, surveyor (c.1867–c.1874); M. Gilmore, traveller (c.1874–c.1878); John Jackson (c.1878–c.1882); David Corry, book-keeper (c.1883–c.1888); Mrs. Annie Richie (c.1888–c.1893); Sarah Donnan (c.1893–1898); Jane Mercer (c.1900–c.1902), noted in the 1901 census as a shopkeeper residing with a domestic servant and two house guests; Mrs. Jane Taylor (c.1902–c.1906); John Johnson, linen business (c.1906–c.1909); John Owen Bell, recorded in the 1911 census as living there with his wife Jane and grown-up son, the house itself classed as a second-class dwelling with eight rooms; Joseph Colgan, posting master (c.1915–1924); Thomas Burns, carter (c.1926–c.1933); Elizabeth Bell (c.1933–c.1940); Thomas Burns (c.1940–c.1944); Joseph Colgan (c.1944–c.1948); Thomas Burns (c.1948–c.1957); and from circa 1957, Thomas J. McCabe, sheet metalworker, who was still resident in 1995.

Setting and Group Value

This section of Ormeau Road is residential, consisting mainly of red-brick terraced houses built at the end of the nineteenth century and some twentieth-century housing of varying styles. The house and its adjacent neighbours on the terrace form a distinct group, particularly to the rear, where the yards and original garden allotments remain remarkably intact. It exemplifies modest late Victorian urban terraced housing, built during a period of rapid expansion of Belfast southwards from the city centre along the main thoroughfares of the Ormeau, Lisburn and Malone Roads.

The extent of the listing includes the house and yard walling.