4 Joy St., Belfast

No. 4 Joy Street is a mid-terrace, three-storey rendered house built around 1840, situated on the east side of Joy Street in Belfast city centre. It forms part of a terrace of four similar houses and displays the proportions and detailing typical of the late-Georgian period. The building was sensitively restored by Hearth Housing Association around 1985, and much of its architectural fabric remains intact. It contributes positively to the historic character and group value of the terrace as a whole, and lies within a conservation area.

EXTERIOR

The building is rectangular on plan and faces west. Its pitched roof is covered in natural slate with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles and two rendered, profiled chimneystacks fitted with octagonal clay pots. Cast-iron guttering runs to a moulded eaves cornice, with a cast-iron downpipe below. The exterior walls are painted in a ruled-and-lined rendered finish, with a moulded plinth course and rusticated quoins to the north end.

The front elevation is two windows wide. Window openings are square-headed with architrave surrounds, painted masonry sills, and replacement 6-over-6 timber sash windows. A continuous sill course runs across both the ground and first floors. The front door occupies a round-headed opening with a moulded architrave surround, scrolled console brackets, and scribed render pilasters. The doorcase is a replacement in timber, fitted with a replacement flat-panelled timber door and fanlight above.

The north side elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The rear elevation is abutted by a gable-ended two-storey return and has asymmetrically placed square-headed window openings fitted with 6-over-6 timber sash windows. The south side elevation adjoins No. 6 Joy Street.

INTERIOR

Although the interior has been modified, its layout and features of interest have largely remained unaltered.

HISTORY AND CONTEXT

The terrace first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, though it was certainly built earlier, during the late-Georgian period. The first edition Ordnance Survey map shows that comparable buildings in the surrounding area — such as Nos. 36–46 Hamilton Street — were under construction by 1832–33. Joy Street had been completed by 1843, when the Belfast Street Directories first recorded the terrace, though the street was numbered differently at that time.

By 1852, No. 4 was occupied by Miss E. Patterson, a dressmaker, and William Savage, a cloth lapper — someone who handled and transferred cloth between different manufacturing stages. At Griffith's Valuation in 1859, the house had passed to Mary Anne Crothers, who rented it from a Mr. Robert Beggs (who also owned the rest of the terrace) at an annual rent of £20. The valuer described it as a three-storey, Class B+ dwelling — meaning not new but in sound repair — measuring 5½ by 9 yards, and valued at £18.

Mary Anne Crothers continued to occupy the house until 1884, when it passed to Thomas Wright, though Belfast Street Directories indicate that Henry McBride, a local printer, and Mr. T. Griffin, a veterinary surgeon, had occupied the address in 1877 and 1880 respectively. The 1901 Census records that Wright, a 70-year-old Methodist coach trimmer, lived there with his wife Elizabeth and their three children. That census Building Return described the house as a second-class dwelling with nine rooms; by 1911 it was recorded as first class with nine rooms, a change also noted for the adjoining No. 6 Joy Street.

In 1906, the entire terrace passed from Robert Beggs to a Miss Ann Kelly and was subsequently revalued; No. 4 was reduced in value first to £17 and then to £16. At some point between 1915 and 1930, John McCann, a carpenter, came into possession of the house, with no further change to its assessed value by the close of the Annual Revisions in 1930. A general revaluation in 1935 — the first in Northern Ireland — put the value at £22, and a second revaluation in 1956 raised it to £24, at which it remained until the end of the rating project in 1972. McCann continued to occupy the house until it was converted into flats around 1950. By 1960 it was inhabited by a bus conductor named Hugh Condit, who lived there until at least 1980.

The street takes its name from a former paper mill in the area owned by Henry Joy, a relative of Henry Joy McCracken, the United Irishman. The mill formerly stood at the junction of Ormeau Avenue and Cromac Street, and the construction of its dam led to the reclamation of acres of land to the south-east of Belfast's town centre at the turn of the 19th century. Joy Street and the surrounding Markets area were laid out during the late-Georgian period, gradually developing southwards from May Street on this reclaimed land.

The grand redbrick terraces erected around 1830–40 were originally occupied by well-respected merchants. Following the mass influx of working-class labourers into Belfast in the wake of the Great Famine, however, the merchant classes had largely abandoned the area by the 1850s, moving to the new suburbs of Malone to the south of the city. The buildings on Joy Street and Hamilton Street subsequently became home to working- and lower-middle-class occupants, and a number of the larger houses were converted into lodging and boarding houses. The establishment of Queen's College in 1849 brought a significant number of students to the area in search of cheap lodgings, a pattern that continued until around 1850–70, when the student population gradually shifted to accommodation closer to the university. After this second exodus, the lodging houses on Joy Street and Hamilton Street became favoured by business lodgers and musical performers attending the nearby music halls. The occupational history of No. 4 itself shows that it was not used as a lodging house and has continued in use as a private dwelling throughout.

The terrace was badly damaged in the mid-1970s when a bomb exploded, destroying the end-terrace dwelling at No. 12. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive subsequently sold the terrace to Hearth Housing Association, who restored Nos. 4 to 8, rebuilt No. 10, and erected two flats on the site of the destroyed No. 12 in 1989–90. No. 4 Joy Street was listed in 1987 and continues to be owned by Hearth Housing Association.