69 Clarendon St., Londonderry

69 Clarendon Street, Londonderry

This is a mid-terrace, three-storey, two-bay former townhouse built in 1863, situated on the south side of Clarendon Street within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, in the townland of Edenballymore. The architect is unknown. It was built as a pair with the adjoining No. 67, and the two properties share group value. Although constructed slightly later than some of its neighbours, the pair conform to the Georgian scale and form of earlier houses on the street, built in the same coloured brick towards the lower end of the terrace. What distinguishes Nos. 67 and 69 from the other eight houses in the terrace is their polychromatic brick dressing, which reflects the Victorian origins of these otherwise Georgian-styled buildings.

Architectural Description

The principal elevation faces north and is built in Flemish bond red brick. Window and door surrounds are finished with chamfered polychromatic brick detailing. The eaves are decorated with alternating single and paired corbel brackets, and there is a chimney to match. Ground-floor windows are square-headed 8/8 timber sliding sash; first- and second-floor windows are 6/6 timber sliding sash. The entrance doorway has a segmental arch opening with a moulded cornice supported by decorative scrolled console brackets. The double doors are painted timber, each leaf having two panels with bolection moulding, and there is a plain fanlight above. At attic level, a single pitched-roof dormer rises above the eaves line, containing coupled 1/1 timber sliding sash windows flanked by timber pilasters and surmounted by a pedimented gable.

The east and west elevations are abutted by the adjoining properties, No. 67 and No. 71 Clarendon Street respectively. The south elevation is three storeys in height with a three-storey pitched-roof rear return at half-landing level; this rear face is finished in smooth unpainted render and has a door opening onto the rear yard. A further flat-roofed single-storey structure abuts the rear. The fenestration to the rear is irregular, combining 6/6 sliding sash windows to the first and second floors with casement windows to the ground, first, and second floors. The dormer to the rear pitched roof, the second-floor windows of the return, and all windows to the single-storey return have been replaced with timber casements.

The roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. A large red brick chimney stack rises from the east gable, centred on the ridge and fitted with six clay pots. Rainwater goods are uPVC to both front and rear elevations. A conservation rooflight has been fitted to the rear return.

Materials summary: natural slate roof; uPVC rainwater goods; red brick walling to the north elevation; smooth unpainted render to the south; timber sliding sash windows.

Interior

The original plan form survives intact in the adjoining No. 67, where much historic fabric, style, and character remain largely in place throughout the interior despite that property's conversion to offices. No specific interior details are recorded for No. 69 itself.

Setting

Nos. 67 and 69 are set within a terrace of ten houses lining the south side of Clarendon Street between Princes Street and Francis Street. The front of the property sits behind a low red-brick wall that rakes to align with the street, with the front door raised two steps above pavement level. Two cast metal fluted gate posts with decorative conical caps support a simple metal gate at the entrance from the street, further enhancing the quality of the setting. To the rear, the yard is enclosed by painted rendered walls. The street as a whole is characterised by long terraces of gentlemen's townhouses that step down in a strong linear formation towards the River Foyle.

Historical Context

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with the first dwellings constructed from around 1853. The wider development of this area — including Great James Street and Queen Street — was driven by a period of economic growth and population expansion in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As John Hume records, during the period 1825 to 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 that the Clarendon Street area was originally rural hinterland; by that date the city's streets had extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. In the early decades of the 19th century the only significant construction north of the walls had been isolated institutional buildings — the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College — with little domestic architecture in the area. The only building in the vicinity predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house constructed around 1815. Writing in The Annals of Derry, published in 1847, Robert Simpson noted that all the district then covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street, and surrounding lanes had originally been meadow ground without a house.

Development of housing in this area began in the late Georgian period and continued into the Victorian era, with the construction of uniform rows of three-storey townhouses creating a new affluent quarter that became the 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 urban planning and represented the most ambitious town-planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.

The 1847 plan of Londonderry by O'Hagan depicted the proposed layout of the street — then recorded as Ponsonby Street — at least a decade before it was completed. It had been named after the Rt. Rev. Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. By the 1850s the street had been renamed Clarendon Street in honour of George Villiers (1800–1870), the Fourth Earl of Clarendon and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1847 to 1852. The second edition Ordnance Survey map confirms the street had been renamed 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. Progress was slow throughout the 1850s: Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street. In 1851, Skipton and Miller had advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street, and Patrick Street to be let in perpetuity; a second round of leases for building ground on the north side of Clarendon Street was advertised in 1856.

No. 69 was built in 1863 as part of the second phase of development on the street. The three-storey house was originally valued at £26 and was constructed for a Mr Robert Alexander, who also owned the adjoining No. 67. In 1901 the property was occupied by Arthur Brooks, a clerk with H.M. Customs; the census of that year described it as a first-class dwelling comprising ten rooms. By 1911 ownership had passed from Robert Alexander to a Lady Millar, and the property's valuation was reduced to £22, at which level it remained until the cancellation of the Annual Revisions in 1931. By the First Revaluation of 1935 a Ms Selina Gosselin had taken ownership, and the value had risen to £33.

The former dwelling was converted into offices for the Abbeyfield Derry Society Ltd in 1966 and was valued at £60 by the close of the Second Revaluation in 1972. In 1970 the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society recommended that Clarendon Street be incorporated into a comprehensive conservation area, and in 1978 the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets a Conservation Area, defined as an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. No. 69 was subsequently listed in 1979.

Minor remedial works were carried out during the 1980s: in 1982 the exterior brickwork was repaired and repointed, and in 1987 the roof was reslated in natural slate. Writing in 2013, Calley described Nos. 67 to 73 Clarendon Street as three-and-a-half-storey brick terrace houses that are essentially the same in scale and form as Nos. 6 to 48, the most notable difference being the dormer windows on the roofs of Nos. 67 to 73. Calley further observed that the polychromatic brick window and door surrounds of Nos. 67 and 69 are particularly interesting given the otherwise severe Georgian-style façades, and that this brickwork is unique among the other terraces on Clarendon Street, clearly revealing the Victorian origins of these Georgian-styled houses. The majority of mid-Victorian townhouses on Clarendon Street are no longer in residential use, having been converted to offices for dentists, solicitors, and accountancy firms in the late 20th century; No. 69 continues to be used as office premises.