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

28 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced house built circa 1896–1898 on the east side of McMaster Street, East Belfast, in the Ballymacarrett townland. It was constructed by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, an architectural practice active from the 1890s into the early decades of the 20th century who also designed comparable terraced streets in Belfast including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place.

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and a red brick chimney stack to the south side. Painted ogee-profile cast-iron rainwater goods are supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course set over an ovolo-moulded corbel course. The walls are built in English garden-wall bond — red brick laid in alternating courses of headers and stretchers — with two polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick-and-sill course at first floor level. Window openings are camber-headed with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs and have projecting masonry sills. The windows themselves are replacement square-headed mock uPVC sashes, and the front door is a replacement timber panelled door with a camber-headed transom light above.

The principal (west) elevation faces McMaster Street. The entrance door sits to the left, accessed via a concrete threshold and flanked by a window to its right. At first floor level, two windows are positioned slightly offset to the right. The north gable abuts No. 26 McMaster Street, and the south gable abuts No. 30 McMaster Street. The rear (east) elevation was not accessible at the time of survey. An enclosed rear yard is reached from a narrow entry running north to south between the back yards of Lendrick Street and McMaster Street, via a timber-sheeted entrance door set within high-level brick walling on all sides.

The house sits at the middle of the east terrace block. McMaster Street is wide — formerly cobbled, now largely laid in concrete with small cobbled areas at each end — and the house opens directly onto a broad pavement with granite kerbs, original lamp posts and electric lighting (converted from former gas lights). Original tiled street signage survives at both the north and south ends of the street.

The eastern terrace of McMaster Street, including No. 28 (numbered among Nos. 16–52), was completed in 1908, a decade after construction of the street's first phase began in 1898–1899. John McMaster owned a wedge-shaped plot of land on the south side of the Newtownards Road, which meant that as the terraces were built further along the street, they became progressively narrower and the gardens progressively smaller.

The houses on McMaster Street were parlour houses built to new housing and planning regulations specifically designed to improve the standard of living for working-class people in Belfast. They were among the first late Victorian industrial terraces in the city to be supplied with running water and flushable toilets, made possible by the construction of a new city drainage system. Gas was also piped into each house for lighting from the outset — a new practice at the time — and these sanitary and utility provisions set McMaster Street apart from the more squalid early Victorian housing common elsewhere in the city. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s.

The first occupant of No. 28 was a Mr. Smith, who took possession in 1908 when the eastern terrace was completed. At that time the house was valued at £8 and was let by John McMaster. By 1910 the occupant was a Mr. Alexander Allen, a crane operator employed at the nearby Harland and Wolff shipyards — one of the principal employers of residents in the area, alongside the ropework factories. The 1911 Census Building Return described No. 28 as a second-class dwelling consisting of seven rooms. Allen vacated the house between 1911 and 1918, when a Mrs. Janet Fotheringham, employed as a French Polisher, took possession. She continued to live there until her death in 1945 at the age of 72. After her death the house was occupied by William Parkinson, a joiner. By the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930 the rateable value remained at £8; by the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 it had risen to £11, and following the Second General Revaluation it stood at £12, remaining at that level through to 1972. By the time of the second revaluation, ownership of the street had passed from John McMaster to one L. McMaster, whose relationship to the original owner is not recorded. Parkinson continued to reside at No. 28 through the 1950s and 1960s, but had vacated by 1970, after which a succession of occupants resided there over the following two decades.

McMaster Street survived the German Blitz of 1941, when Luftwaffe raids on the shipyards caused widespread destruction to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road. It also survived the extensive demolition of the Ballymacarrett area during redevelopment in the 1970s, when many comparable red brick terraces were lost. As an intact example of late Victorian working-class housing, the preservation of the street was considered important, and No. 28 was listed in 1987 along 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 street.

No. 28 has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street and is of local historical and architectural interest. Some alterations — most notably the replacement uPVC sash windows and the replacement front door — detract from the building's original character.