8 Clarendon Street, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 7EP

8 Clarendon Street is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey with attic, red brick Georgian-style townhouse built in 1863. It forms part of a continuous terrace of eleven similar houses running along the north side of Clarendon Street, between Queen Street and Princes Street, and shares group value with Nos. 6 and 10–48 Clarendon Street, which were built over an eight-year period. The house sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, and its well-preserved setting, original character, and much of its original detailing all add to its interest. It is a noteworthy example of the type of property built during a remarkable period of growth in the economy and population of the city during the mid-19th century.

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. Its principal elevation faces south onto Clarendon Street, set behind a low rendered plinth wall surmounted by replacement cast iron railings enclosing a small hard-surfaced area. The roof is pitched natural slate with two rooflights to the front and black clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the return. A slender red brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge and fitted with seven clay pots. Cast iron half-round guttering and rainwater pipes are present to both front and rear.

The principal south-facing front elevation is laid in Flemish bond brick. Window openings have cut brick flat arches with six-over-six timber sliding sashes set within painted cement-rendered reveals and painted sills. To the left of the elevation is a three-centred arched entrance doorway with a moulded surround and moulded entablature supported by a pair of Doric columns, with a simple radial fanlight above a four-panelled timber door. Two diminished windows sit to the right of the door at ground floor level, with two windows to each of the first and second floors — the upper-floor openings are not aligned with those below.

The east and west elevations are abutted by the adjoining Nos. 6 and 10 Clarendon Street respectively. The north rear elevation is three storeys with an attic dormer to the left and a three-storey return to the right, built at half-landing height. The rear walls are laid in brick garden wall bond. Windows to the main rear block are six-over-six timber sliding sashes to the ground, first and second floors, with six-over-three timber sliding sashes to the third-floor stairwell and dormer. The return has six-over-six timber sliding sash windows right of centre to the first and second floors of the north façade. At ground floor level the return is abutted by a single-storey flat-roofed extension of no architectural interest. The west face of the return is blank, and the east face has a door opening fitted with a flush fire door, along with single window openings to the first and second floors that have been bricked up. To the rear is an enclosed yard with a laneway beyond providing access to the rest of the terrace.

The roof is natural slate, rainwater goods are cast iron, walling is brick, and windows are timber throughout.

Historical background

Clarendon Street, characterised by its long terraces of gentlemen's townhouses, was laid out in the early Victorian period, with the first dwellings commencing around 1853. The surrounding streets — Great James Street and Queen Street — were developed in response to a remarkable period of economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As John Hume records, during the period 1825–1850 reconstruction of buildings 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 shows the Clarendon Street area as rural hinterland with few significant structures; at that time the city's street development had 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 had been isolated buildings such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum and Foyle College, with little or no domestic architecture erected in the same period. 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." Robert Simpson, writing in The Annals of Derry in 1847, 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 this area began in the late Georgian period and continued into the Victorian era. The construction of uniform rows of neat three-storey townhouses established a new affluent quarter that swiftly 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 street development, and the scheme represented the most ambitious town planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.

A plan of Londonderry dated 1847 depicted the final layout of Clarendon Street at least a decade before it was actually 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 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. Development progressed slowly throughout the 1850s: in 1851 Skipton and Miller had advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street and Patrick Street to be let in perpetuity, and Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street. In that year, additional leases were advertised for building ground on the northern side of Clarendon Street.

No. 8 was erected in 1863 as part of this later phase of development, along with Nos. 6–10 and 22–26 Clarendon Street, completing the continuous terrace of eleven houses. Nos. 6–10 were constructed for John Allen, a wine merchant and property owner with business premises in Linenhall Street. The house was originally valued at £25 and was occupied in 1863 by a Mr James McNutt. In 1901 it was occupied by Hugh Walsh, a local wool draper; the census of that year described it as a first-class dwelling consisting of nine main rooms. The house remained in the ownership of the Allen family until at least the end of the Annual Revisions in 1931, by which time its valuation had decreased to £22. Nos. 6–26 Clarendon Street had been purchased outright by a Ms Jennie Steen by the time of the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935, and she continued as owner through the Second Revaluation of 1956–72, which valued the house at £34.

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." No. 8 was subsequently listed in 1979. In the same year the building was converted into office premises, requiring extensive repairs. In 1980 infected timber was removed, the chimneys were restored, and the current front door was installed. Further repairs were undertaken in 1991, when the roof was reslated, the brickwork repointed and all the window sashes repaired. At the time of the second survey the building was in use as a dental surgery.

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." Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street are now occupied as residential dwellings; the majority were converted into offices for dentists, solicitors and accountancy firms during the late 20th century.