292 Tennent Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT13 3GG

292 Tennent Street, Belfast, is a three-storey terraced house of brick construction built between 1907 and 1909. It was designed by the architectural firm Hill and Kennedy and constructed by the Edenderry Spinning Company, whose mill was located immediately to the west of the site.

The house is asymmetrical in composition, presenting two bays across two storeys with an attic space. It faces east and is rectilinear on plan, with a two-storey gabled return to the rear. The principal elevation is two openings wide at ground floor level. The building incorporates detailing characteristic of the Arts and Crafts movement, including a dormer window, canted bay window with hipped roof, roughcast render to the first floor, and an irregular roofline. The pitched roof is covered in red clay tiles with roll-moulded clay ridge tiles, and features a central skylight to the rear. A timber canopy with lean-to clay-tile roof projects above the front door, supported on timber brackets with decorative lead flashing.

The walling employs Flemish bonded brick to the ground floor with painted roughcast render above. English Garden Wall bonded brick is used to the rear elevations, with decorative terracotta vents throughout. The ground floor includes a segmental-arch chamfered rebated surround to the front door. The canted bay window to the right contains a hipped roof of clay tiles. The first floor features a central window, which has been replaced with uPVC casement fenestration; historic timber shutters have been lost. All windows are now uPVC replacements with flat arch heads and offset brick sills. Rainwater goods are predominantly uPVC, with the exception of a cast iron downpipe to the main elevation and a decorative cast iron hopper to the left of the east elevation. A single replacement brick chimney with small clay pots serves the building.

To the rear, a single-storey lean-to extension covers the previous yard area, with a further modern lean-to conservatory extending across the full width of the rear west elevation. A former coal shed, re-slated, occupies part of the rear structure.

The property stands on the western side of Tennent Street in the Shankill area, between Crumlin and Shankill Roads. The setting includes a small paved front garden with a rebuilt half-height brick wall and replacement timber gate, and a long narrow garden plot to the rear bounded by a wall. A paved walkway extends along the rear of all properties in the terrace, though access has been restricted by locked gates.

The house first appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1920-31 on a previously undeveloped site that had formed part of the Edenderry flax spinning mill complex. It was added to the valuation records in 1909 at a value of £14, occupied by James McGrughey, and is first listed in the 1910 Street Directory as No. 2 Edenderry Gardens, later becoming part of Tennent Street. The Edenderry Spinning Company retained ownership of the property until at least 1972. The mill continued operating on the adjacent site until 1988, after which the area was redeveloped as an industrial park and apartment complex.

The house represents the design ethos of early twentieth-century terrace housing, built for single-family occupation with provision of a rear yard accessible via a front passage, substantial windows to the principal elevation, and modern amenities of the period. However, the building and the terrace as a whole have suffered significant loss of historic fabric and detailing through inappropriate incremental changes over time, which has seriously compromised their architectural and historic interest.