28 Sunnyside St., Belfast

28 Sunnyside Street, Belfast

A two-storey red-brick terrace house built in 1904, located on Sunnyside Street approximately 3 kilometres from Belfast city centre. The house forms part of a long terrace of twenty-one similar dwellings stretching along the south side of Sunnyside Street, a canted thoroughfare connecting the Ormeau Road with Annadale Embankment.

The building is rectangular on plan with a single-storey, rectangular flat-roofed extension to the rear. The main structure is constructed of smooth red clay brick laid in English Garden Wall bond, with natural slate roof and cast metal guttering to the front elevation. Clay ventilation bricks are positioned at each level of the front elevation, with a blue-brick course and projecting moulded brick course at eaves level. A red-brick chimney stack with projecting brick course and clay pots rises from the right-hand side of the roof.

The front elevation (north-facing) features a painted timber four-panel door with overlight and semi-circular head to the left, with a moulded architrave. To the right is a uPVC top-hung double-glazed window with segmental head and moulded architrave. A similar but smaller window is positioned centrally on the first floor, also with moulded architrave detailing.

The rear elevation (south-facing) of the main house has painted plaster finish at ground floor level, with a small top-hung uPVC window to the left and a modern flat-roofed kitchen extension in rustic red-brick with uPVC windows to the right. The extension incorporates an enclosed yard with an original outside toilet, a small red-brick building with lean-to natural slate roof and painted timber boarded door. At first floor level, the rear elevation has a uPVC top-hung double-glazed window to the left and a smaller staircase window to the right, with a clay ventilation brick at this level. The yard is bounded by a replacement red-brick wall with square-headed doorway and painted timber boarded door. A communal laneway shared with Whitehall Gardens runs along the southern boundary.

Side elevations abut the adjacent properties at numbers 26 and 30 Sunnyside Street respectively.

A small front garden is finished in concrete block paviors and set behind a replacement red-brick boundary wall and gateway with painted metal railings and arched gate. This boundary treatment, together with new front doors and windows, was installed circa 1988 as part of an improvement scheme affecting the entire terrace.

The house retains its original stairwell internally and its external character including the panelled timber front door with stucco surrounds and slate roof, although the original windows and front boundary have been replaced. Despite these alterations, the building has significant group value as part of the larger terrace, representing a good example of modest Edwardian urban terraced housing built during Belfast's rapid southwards expansion from the city centre along the main thoroughfares of the Ormeau, Lisburn and Malone Roads.

The property was listed in 1986. The terrace was developed in stages, with numbers 14-24 shown on Ordnance Survey mapping from 1903 and entered in the valuation book that year, numbers 26-42 entered in the 1904 valuation book, and numbers 44-52 first recorded in 1910. The developer of numbers 14-42 appears to have been Hugh Scott, listed as lessor for these properties in 1906, though the identity of any architect is not recorded. The first occupant of number 28 was James Gibson, noted in the 1906 street directory as a gardener. He was succeeded by Thomas Argue, another gardener, and then William Spence, a labourer. The 1911 census records the building as a second-class dwelling containing five rooms, occupied by William Spence, his wife Ellen, their four mostly grown-up children, and a boarder named John Witherall. A member of the Spence family remained resident until at least 1974.