36 The Mount, BELFAST, County Antrim, BT5 4ND

36 The Mount, Belfast

This is a Georgian-style end-of-terrace townhouse of five bays and two storeys over a basement, erected around 1860. It stands on the south-western portion of The Mount, a small square off Castlereagh Street to the east of Belfast city centre. The building is currently unoccupied and in a state of decay, having lost some historic detailing including windows and roofing, though its general proportions and style remain legible. Together with its immediate neighbours at numbers 32 and 34 The Mount, it represents one of the oldest surviving examples of terraced housing in the townland of Ballymacarrett, and carries significant historical importance through its association with the Pottinger family. The three houses have group value with one another and are of particular local interest.

Architectural Description

The house is of rectangular plan with a single-storey over basement return to the rear. The roof is hipped and clad in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles, and two chimneystacks break through at eaves level, their pots now removed. The chimneystacks are smooth rendered. Rainwater goods are cast-iron with an ogee moulded profile, though some have been replaced in uPVC. The external walls are finished in ruled-and-lined cement render with long-and-short quoins and a moulded masonry corbel course.

The windows are 2/2 timber sliding sash with horizontal glazing bars and no horns, set on masonry cills. Moulded surrounds are present at first-floor level only. Glazing has been largely removed and openings are boarded up. The front door is also boarded up but retains its moulded panelled surround, which rises to scrolled console brackets supporting an entablature canopy surmounted by a pediment.

The principal elevation faces south-west and is symmetrically arranged, with the front door centrally positioned and two windows to either side, first-floor windows directly above, and basement windows below (view partially obscured). Quoins are present to the right-hand return. The north-west elevation abuts number 34 The Mount. The rear elevation is asymmetrically arranged with various window sizes at ground and first floor; existing windows here are 6/6 timber sliding sash, though in very poor condition. A metal-framed bipartite rooflight is also present at the rear (view obscured). The south-east elevation is blank.

Setting

The site is currently bounded by corrugated sheet metal fencing that obscures views to the building. Land immediately to the rear has been left vacant. The surrounding area consists largely of 19th and 20th century red brick terraced housing of two and three storeys. Some structures abut the basement level at the rear but cannot be identified from the accessible viewpoints.

Historical Background

Early valuation maps show that the houses on The Mount square were built around 1860, though number 36 appears to have still been under construction at the time the earliest map was published. The entire development was originally owned by a Mr William B. Ritchie, who also resided at The Grove on the Shore Road. The first recorded occupant of number 36 was a Mr Nathaniel Ferguson, for whom the Annual Revisions initially set a valuation of £24. Ferguson had vacated by around 1874, when a Mr E. J. Munster came into possession; Belfast Street Directories record that Munster served as the Danish Consul for Ireland. During Munster's occupancy in 1880 the valuation was reduced from £24 to £22, though the reason is unclear — numbers 32 and 34 were similarly devalued in the same year.

By 1894 the property was recorded as belonging to Francis Ritchie and Sons, a felt company and manure works on the Mountpottinger Road operated by William B. Ritchie. In the same year a Mr James McQuoid came into possession of the house. The 1901 Census records McQuoid living at number 36 with his wife and children; he is noted as having worked as an estate agent. According to Haines, one of his sons was killed in the First World War, another developed the McQuoid estate agency after his father's death, and a third became assistant deputy commissioner in British West Africa. The Belfast Revaluation of 1900 recorded that McQuoid occupied number 36 as manager of Thomas Hay Ritchie's estate, at a cheap annual rent of £35, with a note that a normal tenant would be expected to pay well over that figure. At that time the house was recorded as measuring 40 by 32 feet and standing 24 feet in height, possessing a basement, nine rooms excluding the kitchen, a bathroom, and gas utilities. The valuation of the house was also decreased in 1900 from £30 to £22, though the reason is not known. The revaluation noted that number 36 was, even then, one of a small number of old properties remaining on the square, as most of the original houses had by that point been replaced with new red brick buildings.

McQuoid continued in residence until sometime between 1915 and 1918, when a Mrs Elizabeth Hannen came into possession. Hannen lived at the address until the 1950s. The First General Revaluation of property in Northern Ireland, carried out in 1935, valued the house at £28; by the second revaluation in 1956 this had increased slightly to £29, though the house was vacant at that time, Elizabeth Hannen having died in 1954 at the age of 73. A joiner named Arthur Howard occupied number 36 from the 1970s until his death in 1984, after which the property was acquired by Simon Community Northern Ireland and used for a number of years as a hostel and homeless shelter. The house was sold in 2005 and at the time of listing was understood to be undergoing renovation work.

Association with The Mount and the Pottinger Family

The Mount square was constructed around 1860 on the site of Mount Pottinger, a former gentleman's residence. The Pottinger family purchased the entire townland of Ballymacarrett in 1672 and had built their first house on the site by 1705. A later house continued to occupy the site as shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, but by the second edition of 1858 the house had been taken down and the site laid out in the form of the present square. One of the family's most prominent members, Sir Thomas Pottinger, was the first Governor of Hong Kong and is commemorated by an Ulster History Circle plaque close to number 36.

Number 36, along with numbers 32 and 34, is among the oldest surviving examples of terraced housing in Ballymacarrett, a townland now largely characterised by the red brick terraces constructed from the mid-to-late 19th century onwards. Haines wrote that "virtually all the houses built after 1857 were still standing a century later [but by the] start of the twentieth century... the whole of inner East Belfast had submitted to the terrace, and only The Mount, the original focus of the district, even then starting to fade, reflected the more prosperous years of Ballymacarrett." Numbers 16 to 26 The Mount, which were quite similar in character to the southern terrace, were subsequently delisted and demolished, leaving numbers 32 to 36 as the last surviving original buildings on the square. Of these, number 32 is essentially a ruin.