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

Number 1 McMaster Street is a two-storey-with-attic, single-bay late Victorian terraced house built around 1896 by developer John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, situated on the west side of McMaster Street in the Ballymacarrett area of East Belfast.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles, a central rooflight window on the east slope, and a modern red brick chimney stack at the south side. Painted ogee-profile cast-iron rainwater goods are supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course over an ovolo-moulded corbel course. The walls are laid in English garden-wall bond — alternating courses of headers and stretchers in red brick — with three polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick and sill course at first floor level, and decorative brickwork detailing above the first floor windows. Most of the polychromatic brickwork has since been painted. The windows are replacement 1-over-1 timber sliding sashes and the door is a replacement timber panelled type; both windows and door sit within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and projecting masonry sills.

The principal (east) elevation has the entrance door to the right, comprising a replacement timber panelled glazed door with a square-headed transom light, accessed from a paved threshold. A window sits to the left of the entrance, and two windows at first floor level are positioned slightly to the left. The north gable is blank, rendered, and abutted by a modern escape stair that also adjoins the building to the north. Access to the house and yard was not provided at the time of inspection, and the remainder of the rear elevation is not visible from the entry at the west. The south gable is abutted by Number 3 McMaster Street.

SETTING

Number 1 sits at the north end of the west terrace — the two-storey-with-attic block — facing directly onto McMaster Street. The wide street, formerly cobbled, is now largely laid in concrete with small areas of original cobbling remaining at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs, original lamp posts and electric lighting (the lamp posts were originally gas-lit). Original tiled street signage survives at both the north and south ends of the street. To the rear, the property 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 entry running north to south between the back yards of Parker Street and McMaster Street. The street narrows towards Major Street at the south. Number 1 has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

McMaster Street is the only late Victorian terrace in Belfast to have survived in reasonably original condition, making it an important link with the city's history as a major world centre of shipbuilding and industrial manufacturing. The current dwelling is one of a terrace of 37 parlour houses built in several phases between 1899 and 1908, all to designs by John Fraser and Son.

In the closing decades of the 19th century, Harland and Wolff developed a shipyard on Queen's Island that was employing 9,000 men by 1900. The surrounding district of Ballymacarrett was also a centre for ropeworks, linen manufacture, engineering and fertiliser production — industries that traded worldwide. What had been an area of fields, cottages and mansions around an industrial core in the mid-19th century was gradually transformed into rows of terraced housing for the workers who were, in large part, the generators of Belfast's new prosperity.

McMaster Street was built in several phases. The first row of two-and-a-half-storey houses, numbers 2 to 14, was in place by 1899. The second phase — numbers 1 to 11, also two-and-a-half storeys — appeared in the street directory for 1900 alongside references to "houses in course of erection." By the census of March 1901, numbers 1 to 35 were complete (number 37 does not appear in the census but is listed in the 1901 street directory), and numbers 16 to 52 were added by 1908. The architects, John Fraser and Son, were active between the 1890s and 1910s and designed a number of similar terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place.

The houses on the western side of the street first appear in valuation records in 1900. They are of the "parlour" type and were built to a high specification — notably including running water and flush toilets, both emerging technologies for workers' housing at the time. Building controls required each house to have a rear entrance, a back yard, and a toilet. Gas was piped in for lighting, though electricity did not become commonplace until the 1930s; lamp-lighters and window-tappers were daily visitors to the street. Male inhabitants were often employed in shipbuilding, women in the linen or rope industries. Larger families tended to occupy the attic-storey houses at the north end of the street.

Number 1 specifically was originally leased by a rivetter named Nicholas Dickinson from the developer John McMaster. In 1900 the house was described as four years old, though it was likely no more than two years old at that point. Numbers 1 to 11 — each comprising a house and yard of two storeys plus an attic with a single-storey return — were valued at £10 10s, later reduced to £9 10s, possibly on appeal. The house contained four bedrooms and a sitting room and was fitted with gas. Monthly rent was £1 8s 4d (£17 per year minus taxes), which was affordable against an average weekly wage of 35 to 45 shillings. The estimated construction cost was £105.

By the time of the 1901 census, the occupier was William Neill, a linen warehouseman (later described in valuation records as a "linen lapper" — a lapper being employed in printing patterns onto linen). Neill lived with his wife, five daughters and a son ranging in age from 2 to 18; three of the children were also employed — 14-year-old Annie and 16-year-old Mary as linen weavers, and 18-year-old Sarah as a linen ornamenter. The Victoria Weaving Factory was situated nearby in Severn Street. By 1911, Arthur McCulley, a baker, was resident with his wife, daughter and son-in-law, the son-in-law working as a blacksmith "at works." Subsequent occupiers included another baker, William Perry (from 1914), followed by Arthur Wardlow, blacksmith and toolsmith (1937), and Thomas McGrath, labourer and oiler (1958). No further residents are recorded up to 1980, reflecting the remarkable stability of the McMaster Street community over time.

A significant disruption came during the Belfast Blitz of 1941, when most residents were forced to leave their homes. Over half of the city's housing stock was damaged across four air raids in April and May of that year. Although McMaster Street was not destroyed, it was targeted during raids on the nights of 7–8 April and 4–5 May 1941. The 1942 street directory records that most houses in the street, including number 1, had been vacated — probably as a result of fire damage. By 1943, however, the majority of residents had returned.

In more recent decades, East Belfast has experienced substantial change as many of the industries that drove its growth contracted or disappeared. Redevelopment in the 1970s led to the demolition of many other terraces in the area. In 1987 McMaster Street was listed for protection, and in 1994 the area was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment. Two of the houses have since been restored by Hearth. Number 1 retains much of its original character, including the polychromatic brick string courses and camber-headed window openings, and has survived both the 1941 Blitz and the demolitions of the 1970s. It forms part of a complete street of late Victorian terraced housing built close to the Harland and Wolff shipyards, providing a tangible connection with Belfast's industrial past and with the improved housing standards introduced for working-class people at the turn of the 20th century.