40 McMaster Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT5 4HP

40 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced house built circa 1896–1908, designed by J. Frazer and Son for developer John McMaster, and located on the east side of McMaster Street in the Ballymacarrett area of East Belfast. It forms part of a complete surviving street of late Victorian terraced housing and has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and a red brick chimney stack at the south side. Rainwater goods consist of a painted ogee-profile cast-iron gutter and a uPVC downpipe, supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course set over an ovolo-moulded corbel course.

The walls are laid in English garden-wall bond — red brick with alternating courses of headers and stretchers — with two polychromatic brick string courses, one of which forms a continuous brick and sill course at first floor level. The rear elevation is finished in painted smooth render.

Windows on the principal west elevation are replacement 1/1 camber-headed horizontally divided timber sliding sashes; those on the east elevation are uPVC casements. The entrance door is a replacement timber panelled door with a camber-headed transom light. All windows and the door sit within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, over projecting masonry sills.

The principal west elevation has the entrance door at the left, flanked by a window to the right at ground floor level, with two windows at first floor offset slightly to the right. The north gable abuts No. 38 McMaster Street and the south gable abuts No. 42 McMaster Street.

The rear south elevation at ground floor level is partially abutted on the right by a single-storey lean-to extension running from the north boundary wall. This extension is built of modern brick with a timber fascia and uPVC rainwater goods. There is a single window to the right at ground floor and two windows at first floor on the rear elevation. The south elevation contains a replacement door at the left and a replacement window at the right. The interior was not accessible at the time of survey.

The property has an enclosed rear yard, accessed from a rear entry via a timber-sheeted entrance door to the east. The yard is enclosed by high-level brick walling on all sides.

SETTING

The house sits in the middle of the east terrace block, facing directly onto McMaster Street. The wide street, formerly cobbled, is now largely finished in concrete with small cobbled areas retained at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs, original lamp posts and electric lighting (formerly gas lights), and original tiled street signage at the north and south ends of the street. The rear elevation is enclosed by high-level stretcher-bonded modern red brick walling with a painted vertically-sheeted timber entrance door at the centre, accessed via a narrow north–south entry running between the back yards of Lendrick Street and McMaster Street. The street narrows towards Major Street at the south.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

No. 40 McMaster Street first appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map for Belfast dated 1920–21, which shows both terraces of McMaster Street fully constructed by that time. Belfast Street Directories record that while the western terrace (Nos. 1–37) and Nos. 6–14 on the eastern side were built in 1898 and 1899, the remainder of the eastern terrace (Nos. 16–52, including No. 40) was not completed until 1908 — a decade after construction of the street began.

Annual Revisions record that the first occupant of No. 40 was a Mr. David Thompson, who came into possession of the house in the year the terrace was completed. In 1908 the house was valued at £8 and was let by John McMaster, who owned the wedge-shaped parcel of land on the south side of the Newtownards Road on which the street was built. Because the land was wedge-shaped, the terraces progressively became narrower and the gardens smaller towards the southern end of the street; No. 40 therefore has a considerably smaller yard than houses at the top of the terrace.

The 1911 Census records Thompson, an Anglican, as employed as a blacksmith in the nearby shipyards. The Census Building Return of that year described his house as a second-class dwelling consisting of seven rooms. Like many residents of McMaster Street, Thompson was employed in the industries — the shipyards and ropework factories — that were the principal employers in the area, and the street's proximity to Harland and Wolff provides a direct link to Belfast's industrial past.

By 1918 Thompson had vacated and the house was occupied by a Mr. Alex McClean, employed as a tailor. The Annual Revisions record the value of No. 40 remaining at £8 through to 1930. By the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 the value had risen to £11, at which point the house was occupied by a Mr. George Speers, a bus conductor.

McMaster Street escaped damage during the 1941 Belfast Blitz, when Luftwaffe raids on the shipyards caused widespread destruction to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road. After the war, the Second General Revaluation of Northern Ireland recorded that ownership of the street had passed from John McMaster to an L. McMaster (relationship unknown). Occupation of No. 40 had by then passed to a Mr. Alex Adams, employed as a joiner; the value was increased to £12 during this period and remained at that figure until the end of the revaluation in 1972. Adams vacated the house in the 1950s, and Street Directories show that between 1960 and 1990 No. 40 was occupied by a succession of tenants.

SIGNIFICANCE AND WIDER CONTEXT

The parlour houses of McMaster Street were constructed under new housing and planning regulations specifically designed to improve living standards for working-class people in Belfast. As a result, they were among the first late Victorian industrial terraces in Belfast to be supplied with running water and flushable toilets, made possible by the construction of a new city drainage system. Gas piping providing lighting was also introduced from the outset. Electricity, however, was not introduced to the street until the 1930s. These features set McMaster Street apart from the more insanitary housing typical of early Victorian Belfast.

The street was designed by J. Frazer and Son; the practice was active from the 1890s through to the second decade of the twentieth century and also designed other Belfast terraced streets including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place, which are similar in character to McMaster Street. Chadwick Street was built in 1899, shortly after the first phase of McMaster Street's construction.

During the 1970s, the Ballymacarrett area underwent extensive redevelopment and many comparable red brick terraces were demolished. McMaster Street survived as an intact remnant of late Victorian working-class housing, and in 1987 No. 40 was listed together with the rest of the terrace. In 1994 the neighbourhood was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment, with criteria established to ensure that any additions to the terrace remain in keeping with the original design and fabric of the Victorian street.