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

62 Donegall Pass is a three-storey, two-bay, mid-terrace early Victorian townhouse built around 1845, located on Donegall Pass in Belfast, close to St Mary Magdalene Church and south of the city centre, east of Shaftesbury Square. It forms part of a listed terrace group and has been converted for use as offices, with interventions that have been largely sympathetic. The building has retained much of its historic fabric and late-Victorian detailing externally, and although the interior has been slightly modified to accommodate its change of use, the layout and features of interest have largely remained unaltered.

The building has a square plan form with a two-storey rear return and a single-storey lean-to extension. The roof is pitched 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 chimney is a replacement in brick with replacement clay pots. The main walls are red brick laid in Flemish bond, with ruled-and-lined render to the ground floor and painted roughcast render to the rear elevation.

Windows are timber sliding sash with horns, in 6/6 and 6/3 configurations, set beneath flat arches with painted masonry cills; the first floor has continuous cills. The entrance doorway is a fine piece of detailing: a four-panel raised-and-fielded bolection-moulded panelled door with a margin-paned overlight, flanked by panelled pilasters rising to foliated console brackets supporting a moulded canopy surmounted by stuccowork.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged, with the front entrance to the right, accessed by four steps shared with the adjoining building, and two windows at each of the ground, first and second floor levels. The left gable abuts 58–60 Donegall Pass and the right gable abuts 64 Donegall Pass. The rear elevation is also asymmetrically arranged: the left side is abutted by the two-storey return, with various timber casement and window openings to the west cheek and a landing window over the return. The return's north face is abutted by the single-storey lean-to extension with a door leading into the yard. At ground floor level on the rear elevation there is an enlarged opening with a modern segmental-arched double-leaf glazed door; the first and second floor windows above match those on the south elevation.

The setting consists of the adjoining terrace on either side, a paved area used as a private car park to the front, and a tarmac yard to the rear enclosed by a palisade gate. The general surroundings are principally two- and three-storey residential buildings from various periods. The former School of Music stands opposite on the south side of the street, with St Mary Magdalene Church to the west.

The terrace, formerly known as Apsley Place, was built in 1846 in what was then a sparsely developed area 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. The architectural historian Brett takes the view that Donegall Pass and the Ormeau Road were laid out as carriage drives through these woodland estates, and that 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 participant in the political life of the town. The building of the gasworks to the east in 1823 probably contributed to the development of the area, but at the time Apsley Place was built in the mid-19th century it was one of 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 into a new terrace he had built at Queen's Elms, where he remained for the rest of his life. He later became proprietor of a linen and linen-yarn business and 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 by a succession of tenants reflecting the range of occupations open 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 into the more salubrious surroundings of North Down and elsewhere, there is a perceptible shift in the tenantry towards the well-doing petty bourgeoisie. The censuses of 1901 and 1911 reveal that by the beginning of the 20th century some tenants were sufficiently wealthy to employ a domestic servant, while others supplemented their income by keeping boarders. It is not until the modern era that the houses appear to have been used as commercial premises.

The first tenants listed at number 62 are George Withers (1846–7) and Alfred Brownless, master mariner (1852). Griffith's Valuation lists the occupiers as Edward Scott, proprietor of the Cromac Brewery, then Richard Alexander. The house is valued at £26 and described as a three-storey house with a two-storey return; the rent is recorded as £30 plus taxes. Subsequent tenants include Alfred Edgar, bookkeeper (1863); Edward Lennon, then Mrs Lennon (1864–70); Miss Murphy (1877–90); and the Reverend William Robert Lawrensen Kinahan, former curate at Knockbreda, Cootehill and Scarvagh, who lived at the house in the 1890s. At the time of the 1901 census the house was home to widower Thomas Jones, Managing Director of a packing case factory, his son who was a foreman at the factory, two further sons (one an unemployed clerk), his son-in-law who was a carpenter, his two daughters, and his seven-month-old granddaughter. The family kept a domestic servant from Londonderry. By 1911 the occupiers were the Saye family, headed by Edward Saye, Master Engineer and Millwright, and his wife Mary, living with their five sons and five daughters ranging in age from 10 to 28, and an aged aunt of 82. Although the couple were born in County Down, they had lived for some years in England, where their eldest five children were born. Three of the sons were engine fitters; the other two were a stoker in a stitching factory and a light-sheet-metal worker; two of the daughters were factory stitchers. Edward James Saye, a son, was living there from 1930 to 1935.

The house is reputed to have been, for much of her later life, the residence of Mary Ann McCracken, who was living there with her niece Maria Bodel and her husband. Mary Ann McCracken was a radical and philanthropist, and sister of Henry Joy McCracken, who was hanged for his part in the United Irish rebellion of 1798. Mary Ann is known to have been committed to the United Irish cause herself and arranged for her brother and his companions to escape after the failure of the rebellion. When Henry Joy was arrested and tried, she attended his trial and accompanied him to the place of execution, attempting to revive his body after the hanging. In 1803 she arranged and paid for the defence of Thomas Russell, who had been involved in Emmet's rebellion of that year, and after his execution made financial provision for his sister Margaret. Mary Ann and her sister ran a business manufacturing and selling muslins from the 1790s, which closed around 1815 due to changing economic conditions. The sisters subsequently became members of the Belfast Charitable Society, and Mary Ann worked tirelessly on behalf of women and children, supporting the cause of equality for women. She was also active in support of the abolition of slavery and of the employment of boys in chimney sweeping. She helped famine victims and the destitute sick, and taught for years in a non-denominational Sabbath school. Although she is said to have lived at number 62, Mary Ann's will leaves all her estate to William McCleery and his two daughters Anna McCleery and Mary McCracken McCleery, who lived at number 70.