10 Clarendon Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7ET

10 Clarendon Street is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey-with-attic, Georgian-style red brick townhouse built in 1863. It forms part of a continuous terrace of eleven similar houses lining the north side of Clarendon Street, and was erected at the same time as Nos. 6, 8 and 22–26 Clarendon Street. It has group value with Nos. 6, 8 and 12–48 Clarendon Street, which were built over an eight-year period. The building is located within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area and was formerly used as a house; at the time of the most recent survey it was in use as offices. It was listed in 1979.

The plan is rectangular with a projecting two-storey rear return. The principal elevation faces south onto Clarendon Street and sits behind a low rendered plinth wall with replacement painted black decorative cast iron railings with trefoil finials above sandstone coping. Nos. 6, 8 and 10 are set slightly further back from the street than the earlier terrace to the west, and No. 10 is linked internally at first-floor and attic level to No. 12 Clarendon Street. To the east it is abutted by No. 6, and to the west by No. 12.

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with angled black clay ridge tiles. There are two rooflights to the south and a single dormer to the rear north elevation. The terrace is stepped at each house to follow the contour of the hill, with each house having a red brick rectangular chimney stack to its east; No. 10 has buff clay pots to its red brick chimney. Metal semi-circular guttering discharges to circular-section downpipes shared with No. 6.

The principal south elevation is laid in Flemish brick bond. The windows are square-headed and fitted with two 6/6 timber sliding sash windows at ground-floor level and two 6/6 timber sliding sash windows at first and second floors; there are no window horns. The entrance doorway has a three-centred arched opening with a moulded cornice supported by columns of the Doric order on either side of a four-panelled painted timber door, with a radial fanlight above. Brass door furniture and an iron boot scraper are present.

The north elevation, where visible from the rear, consists of a three-storey facade with a door opening onto the rear yard and a three-storey projecting return with a pitched natural slate roof and angled black clay ridge tiles. A single-storey smooth cement-rendered extension is attached to the return, with a pitched roof to the first section and a flat-roofed section beyond. The extension has uPVC guttering, modern timber windows and concrete cills. The rear yard has a concrete surface, and a rubble wall forms the northern yard boundary with an opening to a rear access route; this walling is likely the remains of an outhouse, as similar structures survive at the rear of neighbouring properties.

Despite some loss of original plan form, a significant proportion of original joinery survives internally. The exterior retains considerable historic character, particularly through the Georgian-style doorway with its moulded cornice, Doric columns and radial fanlight. Repair work was carried out in 1992, when the brickwork was repointed, the roof was reslated, and the original windows and entrance door were restored.

The building's materials are: natural slate roofing, metal rainwater goods, brick walling, and timber sliding sash windows.

Historical background

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with the first dwellings beginning to be constructed around 1853. The development of similar terraced streets — including Great James Street and Queen Street — was driven by significant growth in the economy and population of Londonderry during the mid-19th century. The historian John Hume records that during the period 1825–1850, reconstruction within the city walls took place alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 records the Clarendon Street area as rural hinterland with few significant structures. At that date, the city's streets extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street and William Street. In the early decades of the 19th century, the only major construction north of the walls comprised isolated buildings such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum and Foyle College, with little domestic architecture. The only building in the area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house constructed around 1815, which Calley describes as "a pleasing composition which offers a gentle rebuke to some of the exuberance of later nearby buildings … one of its pleasant features is that it opens a gap in the long terraces."

Writing in The Annals of Derry, published in 1847, Robert Simpson recorded that "all the district now covered by Great James's Street, William Street, Little James Street … and the numerous lanes in that vicinity [originally comprised] meadow ground without a house." The initial development of housing in the area began in the late Georgian period and continued into the Victorian era. The construction of uniform rows of three-storey Georgian-style townhouses swiftly established a new affluent district that became the preferred residence of the city's merchant and professional classes. The geometric street pattern of Clarendon Street, Great James Street and Queen Street was characteristic of Georgian town planning and represented the most ambitious planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.

An 1847 plan of Londonderry depicted the final layout of Clarendon Street at least a decade before it was completed and recorded that the street was originally known as Ponsonby Street, named after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. By the 1850s it had been renamed Clarendon Street in honour of George Villiers (1800–1870), the Fourth Earl of Clarendon and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1847 and 1852. The second edition Ordnance Survey map confirms the name had changed to Clarendon Street by at least 1853.

Although the 1847 plan showed Clarendon Street extending from the quay up to Francis Street, only the lower section between the Strand Road and Queen Street had been laid out by 1853. Development progressed slowly throughout the 1850s. In 1851, Skipton and Miller advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street and Patrick Street to be let in perpetuity. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street, and in that year further leases for building ground on the northern side of the street were advertised.

No. 10 Clarendon Street was one of the final buildings to be constructed along the north terrace. It was erected in 1863 alongside Nos. 6–8 and 22–26, completing the continuous terrace of eleven houses running between Queen Street and Princes Street. Nos. 6–10 were built for John Allen, a wine merchant and property owner with business premises on Linenhall Street. The house was originally valued at £25 and was first occupied by a Mr John Kyle in 1863. In 1901, No. 10 was occupied by Thomas Sweeny, an agent of a local steamship firm; the census of that year described the house as a first-class dwelling containing ten main rooms. The property remained in the ownership of the Allen family until at least 1931.

By the time of the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935, the entire row of Nos. 6–26 Clarendon Street had been purchased by a Ms Jennie Steen, and the value of No. 10 had risen to £36. Between 1935 and 1956, Nos. 10 and 12 were combined into a single property, valued at £128, and by the 1950s the building was occupied by the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA). The Derry Housing Association acquired Nos. 10–12 in 1970 and converted the former YWCA hall into a number of residential flats, with a total value of £85 and 10 shillings by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72).

In 1978, the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets a Conservation Area, described as "an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance." Writing in 2013, Calley described Nos. 6–48 Clarendon Street as a "delightfully long red brick terrace of the mid-19th century … the buildings are nearly all the same, being three-and-a-half-storey, two-bay with most ground floors rather inelegantly squeezing in a doorway with two reduced scale window bays … depressed arched recessed timber-framed doorways have simple segmented fanlights and thin Doric columns supporting entablatures." By the time of the most recent survey, few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street remained in residential use, with the majority having been converted into offices for local dental, legal and accountancy practices in the late 20th century.