Millburn Terrace, 49 Millburn Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52 1QT

Millburn Terrace at 49 Millburn Road is a two-bay, three-storey mid-terrace Victorian townhouse built around 1866 on the east side of Millburn Road in Coleraine town centre. It forms part of an important terrace of eight dwellings (with a ninth added around 1875), originally named Clifton Terrace, and is of particular interest as part of this group, which represents one of the best-preserved examples of mid-nineteenth-century terraced architecture in the town.

The house is square on plan with a single-storey canted bay to the front and a three-storey return to the rear. The pitched natural slate roof has blue and black angled ridged tiles. Red-brick and rendered chimneysstacks with tall clay pots rise prominently. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods sit on dentilled eaves. The walling is painted roughcast render over a smooth rendered plinth.

The principal elevation faces northwest and is two windows wide at the upper floors. Windows are replacement uPVC sashes in simple painted smooth render surrounds with projecting painted sills. The ground floor features a single-storey canted bay on the left. At the right is a classical-style doorcase comprising panelled pilasters, a frieze carved with a Greek key motif, and scrolled acanthus-leaf console brackets supporting a corniced canopy. The doorcase contains a five-panelled hardwood timber door with a deep transom light over, fitted with a figurative brass knocker and accessed via two cement steps. The northeast elevation is abutted by the adjoining building; the southeast (rear) elevation is abutted at its right by the three-storey return; and the southwest elevation is abutted by the adjoining building to the left.

The building was constructed on land originally owned by Richard Olphert of Millburn House. The terrace was the first major development undertaken by the Coleraine Building Society, which was established in 1864. The contractor was Joseph Esdale. The terrace was named Clifton after the family name of Lady Bruce, whose husband Sir Henry Hervey Bruce was president of the building society. The original eight houses all had returns, canted bays and railings to the front, and a row of outbuildings to the rear.

Well-known Coleraine merchants such as Hugh Cheyne and James Brookes were among the first occupiers. By the turn of the twentieth century, residents included retired farmers, professional people and merchants, some of whom were able to employ servants. Number 49 was originally a house, office and garden occupied by William Bole and leased from Hugh Cheyne, valued at £16 and 15 shillings for the garden. Subsequent occupiers included Francis O'Neill (1873), William B Kelly (1876), K H Stevenson (1881), Ellen Irwin (1884), Gottfried Wefers (1887) and Annie O'Doherty (1906). Gottfried Wefers, a native of Germany, was a teacher with a Dublin wife and three daughters. The eleven-room house was designated first class in the 1901 census. In 1911, Margaret, Annie and John Doherty—two sisters and a brother—were living in the house together with a visitor and her two young children. Annie and John Doherty were both sorting clerks and telegraphists at the post office, though John had by then retired.

The house is set slightly elevated on a lawned and shrubbed site with a concrete pathway leading to steps to a paved patio at the front. It is bounded to neighbouring properties by hedges and to the road by a rubblestone wall with sandstone coping and mature shrubbery. An enclosed yard to the rear contains a two-storey roughcast rendered outbuilding with a corrugated tin roof, forming a terrace with outbuildings serving the rest of the terrace. The property overlooks The Rose Gardens and Anderson Park on the east side of the River Bann. The terrace was listed in 1997 and the dwelling remains in domestic use.