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

No. 8 McMaster Street is a two-storey-with-attic, single-bay late Victorian terraced house, built around 1896–1898 by developer John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son. It stands on the east side of McMaster Street in the Ballymacarrett area of East Belfast, close to the former Harland and Wolff shipyards.

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

On the principal (west) elevation, the entrance door is positioned to the left and accessed by a painted concrete threshold, with a window to its right; two windows at first-floor level are offset slightly to the right. The north gable abuts No. 6 McMaster Street, and the south gable abuts No. 10. The rear (east) elevation is abutted to the right by a two-storey extension with a pitched roof and uPVC rainwater goods; access to the house and yard was not provided at the time of recording, so the remainder of the rear elevation was not visible.

The house sits at the north end of the east terrace and faces directly onto McMaster Street. The street, formerly cobbled, is now largely concrete with small cobbled sections at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs, original lamp posts and electric lighting (converted from former gas lights), and original tiled street signage at both the north and south ends. 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–south between the back yards of Lendrick Street and McMaster Street. The street narrows towards Major Street to the south.

No. 8 McMaster Street first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map for Belfast in 1902, at which point only nos. 6 to 14 on the eastern terrace had been built. Belfast Street Directories indicate that all houses on the western terrace (nos. 1–37) were constructed together in 1898, while the remainder of the eastern terrace (nos. 16–52) was not added until 1908. The 1901 Census and Annual Revisions record that the first occupant was Mr. Charles McMichael, a Presbyterian painter, who rented the property from John McMaster — the original owner of the wedge-shaped plot of land on the south side of the Newtownards Road on which he laid out the present street. Because the plot was wedge-shaped, the terraced houses became progressively narrower and their yards smaller as they approached the far end of the street; No. 8 is consequently one of the larger houses on the terrace and has one of the larger rear yards.

The 1899 valuation placed the house at £10 10s., let to McMichael at a monthly rent of £1 8s. 4d. (£17 annually). The Belfast revaluation of 1900 recorded it as a two-storey house with attic, measuring 13.6 feet in width, 25 feet in depth, and 24 feet in height, fitted with gas lighting and estimated to have cost £131 to construct. The 1901 Census Building Return described the house as a first-class dwelling with eight rooms; by 1911 this had been reclassified as a second-class dwelling with seven rooms, a change repeated across nos. 6–14.

Many occupants of No. 8 during its history, like others on the street, were employed in the nearby shipyards or ropework industries. The 1911 Census records that James White lived at the address with his family; he and his son (also named James) worked at the shipyards as a joiner and an apprentice fitter respectively. Belfast Street Directories also show James White at nos. 14 and 22 McMaster Street in 1907 and 1908, suggesting possible involvement in the second phase of the terrace's construction. White remained at No. 8 until at least 1918, making it his longest residence on the street. By 1930, a Mr. William Smith, employed as a plater at the shipyards, had come into possession of the house. By the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935, the property's value had risen to £14 10s., at which time a Mr. J. Uprichard was in possession.

McMaster Street escaped damage during the 1941 Belfast Blitz, when the Luftwaffe targeted the Belfast shipyards and caused widespread destruction to buildings and residential terraces along the Newtownards Road. After the war, the second revaluation of Northern Ireland property recorded that ownership of the street had passed from John McMaster to one L. McMaster (relationship unknown), though the value of No. 8 was unchanged. By 1940 the house was in the possession of Mr. David Ball, employed as a pipe coverer, and it remained occupied by a member of the Ball family into the 1960s. Between the 1970s and 1990s No. 8 was the home of a Mr. Thomas Cordner.

The terraces were designed by John Frazer and Sons, who the Dictionary of Irish Architects notes was active from the 1890s into the second decade of the 20th century, and who also designed similarly conceived terraced streets in Belfast including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place, with Chadwick Street built in 1899 around the time McMaster Street's first phase of construction was completed.

The parlour houses on McMaster Street were built to new housing and planning regulations intended to improve the standard of living for working-class people in Belfast. As a result, 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 piping for lighting was also provided from the outset, distinguishing McMaster Street from the more squalid early Victorian housing common elsewhere in Belfast at the time. Electricity was not introduced to the street until the 1930s.

During the 1970s, the Ballymacarrett area was extensively redeveloped, with the demolition of many red brick terraces similar to McMaster Street. The survival of McMaster Street as an intact example of late Victorian working-class housing was therefore considered significant, and in 1987 No. 8 was listed together with the rest of the terrace. In 1994 the neighbourhood was designated a conservation area by the Department of the Environment. Around 2003, a sympathetic two-storey red brick extension was added to the rear of the property.

No. 8 is of group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street and is of local historic interest.