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

25 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced house built around 1896, designed by J. Frazer and Son for developer John McMaster. It stands on the west side of McMaster Street in the Ballymacarrett district of East Belfast, close to the former Harland and Wolff shipyards on Queen's Island.

THE STREET AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE

McMaster Street is the only late Victorian terrace in Belfast to have survived in reasonably original condition. It forms a complete street of workers' housing and has been a conservation area since 1994. The terrace was built in several phases between 1899 and 1908, ultimately comprising 37 parlour houses. The two-storey block on the west side, of which number 25 is part, was among the later phases; by the 1901 census, numbers 1 to 35 were complete. The architects, John Fraser and Son, were active from the 1890s to the 1910s and designed a number of similar terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place.

The street was built close to the Harland and Wolff shipyard, which employed around 9,000 men by 1900. Ballymacarrett at this time was also a centre for ropeworks, linen manufacture, engineering and fertiliser production. What had been an area of fields, cottages and mansions around an industrial core in the mid-19th century was progressively developed into rows of terraced housing for the workers who generated much of Belfast's prosperity. Number 25 has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street.

These were parlour-type houses, built to a high specification for working-class dwellings of the period: they had running water, flush toilets and rear entrances with back yards — all features required under the building controls of the time, which were intended to improve living standards. Gas was piped in for lighting; electricity did not become common until the 1930s. The houses first appear in valuation records in 1900. Numbers 13 to 37, including number 25, were all valued at £8 — slightly less than numbers 1 to 11 at the north end, which are marginally larger. Number 25 contained three bedrooms, was fitted with gas, and had a weekly rent of 5 shillings. The estimated construction cost was £76.

EXTERIOR

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles. There is a central rooflight on the east slope and a modern red brick chimney stack at the south side. The rainwater goods are painted ogee-profile cast iron, supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course over an ovolo-moulded corbel course.

The walls are English garden-wall bonded red brick — alternating courses of headers and stretchers — with three polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick-and-sill course at first-floor level, and further decorative polychromatic detailing above the first-floor windows. All of this polychromatic brickwork is now painted, except for the section above the first-floor windows. All window and door openings sit within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, with projecting masonry sills. The windows are replacement uPVC and the doors replacement timber panelled with glazing.

The principal, east-facing elevation has an entrance door to the right — a replacement timber panelled door with a square-headed transom light, accessed by a tiled threshold — flanked by a window to the left. At first-floor level there are two windows, offset slightly to the left. The north gable is abutted by number 23 and the south gable by number 27 McMaster Street. The rear elevation was not accessible for inspection, but it 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 to south between the back yards of Parker Street and McMaster Street.

SETTING

The house stands at the centre of the west two-storey terrace block, facing directly onto McMaster Street. The street is wide — formerly cobbled, now largely concrete, with small cobbled areas remaining at each end. The house opens straight onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs. Original lamp posts remain, fitted with electric lighting (originally gas). Original tiled street signage is present at both the north and south ends of the street. The street narrows towards Major Street at the south.

HISTORY OF THE HOUSE

The first recorded tenant was Alexander Scott, a shipyard labourer, who leased the house from John McMaster. In 1900 the property was noted as being four years old, though it was probably no more than a year old at that time. The 1901 census records Scott living there with his wife and five children; his two older daughters, aged 16 and 18, worked as braiders in the ropeworks. A rapid succession of tenants followed: Thomas Girvin, brass finisher (1903); William Dickinson, labourer (1904); Isaac Cheaters, fitter (1907). By the 1911 census, the occupant was Samuel Bailie, a riveter at the shipyard, living with his wife and three young children, along with a female visitor and her newborn baby. Bailie had previously lived at number 19.

The Bailie family was forced to leave during the Belfast Blitz. There were four air raids on Belfast in April and May 1941, during which over half the city's housing stock was damaged. McMaster Street was not destroyed, but the area was targeted in raids on 7–8 April and 4–5 May. The 1942 street directory records that most houses in the street had been vacated, including number 13, probably due to fire damage. By 1943 most residents had returned, including the Bailies, though Samuel's wife Agnes died that year. The Bailie family continued to live at number 25 until 1958, when it was taken over by J. A. Hutchinson, mechanic. Mrs Ada Hewitt followed in 1973 and was resident until at least 1980.

Redevelopment in the 1970s led to the demolition of many neighbouring terraces. McMaster Street was listed in 1987, and in 1994 the area was designated a conservation area. Two houses in the street have since been restored by Hearth.