Millburn Terrace, 37 Millburn Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52 1QT

Millburn Terrace, 37 Millburn Road, Coleraine is a two-bay three-storey end-terraced mid-Victorian townhouse built around 1875 and located on the east side of Millburn Road in Coleraine town centre. It is a well-preserved example of a tall mid-Victorian terrace and forms part of an important architectural group that contributes significantly to the character of the town.

The building is square on plan with a two-storey canted bay to the front and a full-height gabled return to the rear. The pitched natural slate roof is dressed with blue and black angled ridge tiles, and features polychrome brick chimneystacks with sandstone caps and tall clay pots. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods are mounted on projecting dentilled eaves. The walling comprises dry dash render over a painted smooth rendered plinth with rendered quoin strips and platband between floors; original exposed brickwork is visible to the southwest, and painted roughcast render covers the rear.

Windows throughout are 1/1 timber sash with horns, set in smooth rendered painted reveals with projecting painted sills. Corbels support the sills at first-floor level, and the two-storey canted bay window to the front has continuous sills. The principal elevation faces northwest, with the two-storey canted bay positioned to the right and the entrance door to the left. The second floor has three windows, paired to the right side.

The entrance comprises a pedimented doorcase with scrolled console brackets and panelled pilasters. The door itself is a bolection-moulded four-panel timber door with brass door furniture, accessed by a single sandstone step. It is flanked by original stained and leaded glass sidelights on timber panelled recesses and surmounted by a transom light with a decorative central panel inscribed "No. 37".

The northeast elevation is abutted by an adjoining building. The southeast rear elevation is abutted at the left by the full-height return and contains two 1/1 windows with margin panes at second-floor level and three leaded-and-stained glass windows with margin panes at first-floor level lighting the half-landing; the outer windows are narrower. All have continuous painted sills. The ground floor has two small 1/1 windows and a replacement timber-sheeted door glazed to the upper section. The return features narrow uPVC windows to each floor at the right cheek and to the gable at ground-floor right. A small lean-to abutment with a corrugated tin roof is attached to the gable. The southwest elevation has windows at each floor.

The building sits on a lawned and shrubbed site, slightly elevated, with a central pathway leading to a set of sandstone steps at the front. A rubblestone wall bounds the property to the road and narrow alley to the southwest, topped by a red brick plinth with piers finished with pointed caps and supporting metal railings. A paved rear yard is enclosed by original rubblestone walls topped with a timber batten gate providing access to a communal rear alley.

Millburn Terrace was originally named Clifton Terrace and was built around 1866 on land owned by Richard Olphert of Millburn House (Mullin); number 37 was added around 1875. The terrace was first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1904. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Coleraine experienced a significant building boom of terraces and villas of which local people were extremely proud. After the Coleraine Building Society was established in 1864, the Olphert estate's sites on Millburn Road attracted their attention, and the society's first major development was this terrace of eight dwellings, with a ninth added around 1875. The contractor was Joseph Esdale, and the terrace was named 'Clifton' after the family name of Lady Bruce, whose husband Sir Henry Hervey Bruce was president of the building society.

Originally comprising eight houses, each with returns, the terrace was built with canted bays and railings to the front and a row of outbuildings to the rear. The first occupiers included well-known Coleraine merchants such as Hugh Cheyne and James Brookes. By the turn of the twentieth century, residents were a mix of retired farmers, professional people and merchants, some of whom were able to employ servants.

Number 37, the end terrace in the row, was built somewhat later than the others, appearing in valuation records as an unfinished dwelling in 1875 and being completed by 1876, when it was valued at £30—considerably higher than the other houses in the terrace. The first recorded occupier was John Gribbon, followed by Daniel McLaughlin (1892), John Reid McCurdy (1900) and Robert H Chambers (1910). In 1913 the house was purchased for £395, though valuation notes at that time recorded that property in the street was stated to be 'going down in value'. Chambers was succeeded by Maria Haughey in 1924 and Lowry C L Tottenham in 1929. John Reid McCurdy was a retired farmer who lived with his brother, also a retired farmer, and two sisters, one of whom worked as a seamstress; the eleven-room house was designated first class at the 1901 census. Robert H Chambers was a 'whisky traveller' who lived with his wife and three children, according to the 1911 census.

The terrace was listed in 1997 and the current dwelling remains in domestic use.