6 Clarence Avenue, Londonderry

No. 6 Clarence Avenue is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey red-brick townhouse built in 1900 to designs by Robert Eccles Buchanan, a local architect and civil engineer active in Londonderry between 1887 and the 1920s. It is one of eleven similar houses forming a unified terrace lining the north side of Clarence Avenue within the Magee Conservation Area, set on a steep gradient stepping down towards the river.

The house is Late Victorian in style with a clear Arts and Crafts influence, expressed in the leaded and stained glass upper lights and the decorative half-timber work to the gabled bays. The plan is rectangular with a projecting rear return built at half-landing level.

The principal elevation faces south onto Clarence Avenue and is laid in Flemish brick bond. It is two bays wide. To the right, a two-storey canted bay rises through the ground and first floors and is surmounted at second floor level by a rectangular gabled bay cantilevered on large timber brackets with carved timber corbels to either side. The gable is clad in vertical half-timbering with a plain wide painted timber fascia board, and is finished with a terracotta finial at the apex. All openings are square-headed. The entrance doorway is reached by five steps and features a moulded cornice supported on console brackets, with moulded pilasters to either side of a four-panel fielded timber door and a plain fanlight above. All windows to the south elevation are timber sliding sash: 2/1 pane to the canted bay, with paired stained glass upper lights; a single window above the door at first floor level; and 8/2 pane windows to the second floor. Painted rendered bands run across the ground and first floor window heads, and a sill course to the first and second floor windows is painted in a contrasting colour. Cast-iron guttering and circular downpipes serve the front elevation.

The east and west sides abut the adjoining properties at Nos. 4 and 8 Clarence Avenue. The north elevation is three storeys tall with a two-storey gabled rear return, finished in painted render with uPVC casement windows and a door opening onto the rear yard. A later painted rendered two-storey extension has been added to the rear return, with a monopitched slate roof, a blank north end, and uPVC casement windows to the east and west faces.

The main roof and rear return are covered in pitched natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles. A modern skylight has been inserted into the north-facing slope of the main roof near eaves level. A large red-brick chimney stack with a dog-toothed corbel course rises from the east side, centred on the ridge and fitted with clay pots. A smaller red-brick chimney is centred on the gable end of the original rear return.

In 1990, conservation work was carried out that included the reslating of the roof in natural slate, the replacement of the rainwater goods, and the installation of new sliding sash windows to the front elevation.

The house is set behind a low red-brick wall with a small front garden. The rear yard is enclosed by a mixture of rubble schist stone and concrete block walling, with a timber-sheeted gate within a segmental arched opening, backing onto a shared alley with the university campus beyond.

Clarence Avenue was originally laid out in 1897 and named in memory of Prince Albert Victor, the last Duke of Clarence and son of King Edward VII, who died unexpectedly in 1892 at the age of 28. The northern terrace of Nos. 2–22 was erected in 1900, as recorded in the Annual Revisions of the time and reported in the Irish Builder of 15 January 1900. The terrace was developed in tandem with the expansion of the Magee College campus; from the 1880s onwards, new red-brick dwellings on Clarence Avenue and College Terrace were built to provide accommodation for students and college employees.

This development formed part of a broader northward expansion of Londonderry that had begun in the mid-19th century with Georgian-style terraces on Great James Street, Queen Street and Clarendon Street. At the time Crawford Square was built in the 1860s–1870s, the Edenballymore and Northland Road area was still essentially rural in character. The expansion of the city was driven by a period of economic growth and prosperity lasting from the 1860s to the end of the 19th century.

No. 6 was initially valued at £24 and first occupied by a Mrs Barbara Donnelly, whose household was recorded in the 1901 Census as a first-class dwelling of ten rooms. By the 1930s, ownership had passed to a Mr James A. Thompson, though Barbara Donnelly continued to live at the house until her death in 1946, by which time the valuation had risen to £37. After Donnelly's death the house was occupied by the Pickthall family, who remained there until the 1970s. By the end of the Second Revaluation of 1956–72, the property, still owned by Thompson, was valued at £42.

The terrace as a whole was listed in 1979. It was incorporated into the Magee Conservation Area in 2006, and the Conservation Guide identified Clarence Avenue as a terrace that is architecturally very unified and virtually intact, counting it among the city's finest and grandest townhouses. Buchanan's design has been praised by the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society as a fine and excellently modelled terrace, and Calley describes the houses as generously proportioned, with canted bay windows running through the ground and first floors and oversized cantilevered box-like pedimented square bay windows at second floor level resting on the bay below and supported by robust timber brackets.