38 Clarendon Street, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 7ET

38 Clarendon Street is a mid-Victorian, mid-terrace townhouse of Georgian style, built in 1864 on the north side of Clarendon Street in the Edenballymore townland of Londonderry. It is two bays wide, three storeys tall with an attic over a basement, and rectangular on plan with a projecting return to the rear. Originally built as a residential dwelling, it is now used as office premises. The property forms part of a group of eleven similar houses lining the north side of Clarendon Street, and has group value with Nos. 6–36 and 40–48, the wider terrace having been built over an eight-year period. The building sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, and its well-preserved setting adds to its significance. It is a noteworthy example of the type of prosperous townhouse constructed during a period of economic and population growth in the city in the mid-19th century.

The principal south-facing front elevation is built in Flemish bond red brick. A low rendered plinth wall with painted concrete capping and replacement cast iron railings stands between the pavement and the building. All window openings on the front elevation are square-headed and fitted with 2/2 timber sliding sash windows, set within painted cement-rendered reveals with painted sills, unless noted otherwise. The entrance doorway has a three-centred arched opening with a moulded cornice supported by a pair of Doric order columns with plain shafts, a plain fanlight above, and a four-panelled timber door. To the right of the door is a single window, with a casement window directly below at basement level. Two windows appear at first and second floor levels, though these are not aligned with the ground floor openings. The east and west sides of the building abut the adjoining properties, Nos. 40 and 36 Clarendon Street respectively.

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate, with black clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the rear return. A slender red brick chimney stack, partly rebuilt, rises from the east side and is centred on the ridge with clay pots. Cast iron half-round guttering on rise and fall brackets, with a circular downpipe, serves the front elevation; uPVC rainwater goods are fitted to the rear.

The north-facing rear elevation is roughcast rendered and rises three storeys over a basement. To the left is an attic dormer, and to the right is a three-storey-over-basement return with a pitched roof, built at half-landing height. On the left bay of the rear elevation, the basement level has a single 6/3 timber sliding sash window set behind a modern steel grille. The ground, first, and second floors each have a single 6/6 timber sliding sash window, above which a 6/3 timber sliding sash window sits within the pitched roof dormer. The rear return is surmounted by a single 6/3 timber sliding sash window. On the north face of the rear return, the ground floor has a single 2/2 timber sliding sash window; the first floor has a single 1/1 timber sliding sash window with coloured glass margin panes; the second floor has a single 2/2 timber sliding sash window; and the basement level is blank. The east face of the return has a square-headed door opening at ground floor left, above which are single diminutive timber casement windows at first and second floor levels. The west face of the return is blank.

The approach to the principal entrance is paved with substantial granite flagstones. To the north end of the site stands a single-storey flat-roofed outbuilding. A laneway runs along the rear, behind the mews building, providing access to the rest of the terrace.

The original character of the house and much of its original detailing survive.

Historical background

The development of Clarendon Street was part of a broader expansion of Londonderry beyond its historic walls during the mid-19th century. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 shows the Clarendon Street area as rural hinterland with few structures, and by that date the city's streets extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. North of the walls, early construction had been confined to isolated institutional buildings such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College, with little domestic architecture. The only surviving building in the area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house of around 1815. As Robert Simpson recorded in his Annals of Derry (1847), the ground later covered by Great James's Street, William Street, Little James's Street, and surrounding lanes had originally been meadow ground.

Housing development in this area began in the late Georgian period and continued into the Victorian era, producing uniform rows of neat three-storey townhouses that rapidly became home to the city's merchant and professional classes. The geometric street layout 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.

A plan of Londonderry dated 1847 shows the proposed layout of Clarendon Street at least a decade before it was completed, and records that the street was originally named Ponsonby Street, 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), 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 the 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 through the 1850s: in 1851 Skipton and Miller had advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street, and Patrick Street to 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 for building ground on the northern side of Clarendon Street were advertised.

No. 38 was built in 1864 as part of the second phase of development of Clarendon Street, constructed along with the adjoining Nos. 40–44 for William McIlwee, a carpenter and builder who held business premises on Foyle Street. On its completion in 1864 the house was originally valued at £27 and was occupied by a Mr C. Marshall. In 1888, ownership passed to a Mr Frances McPherson. By the 1930s a Mr John H. McCrea was recorded as owner in the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland, with the value set at £36 in 1935. By the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72), the house remained in McCrea's ownership and its value stood at £32. The 1901 census recorded the property as a first-class dwelling consisting of ten rooms, then occupied by David Irvine, a bookbinder with business premises on Castle Street.

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. 38 was listed in 1979. At some point Nos. 36–38 were converted into self-contained flats; in 1991, No. 38 was converted into office premises. This conversion involved general repair of the building and the restoration of its fanlight. At the time of the most recent survey the building continued to be used as offices.

In 2013, the architectural historian Calley described Nos. 6–48 Clarendon Street as a "delightfully long red brick terrace of the mid-19th century," noting that "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 late 20th century, the majority of the townhouses along Clarendon Street had been converted into offices for dentists, solicitors, and accountancy firms, and few remain in residential use.