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

30 Clarendon Street is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey with attic, red brick Georgian-style townhouse built in 1862, forming part of a unified terrace that lines the north side of Clarendon Street in the Edenballymore townland of Londonderry. The listing covers both the house and its mews building. The property is located within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area and shares group value with Nos. 6–28 and 32–48 Clarendon Street, a run of eleven similar Georgian-style early to mid-Victorian townhouses built over an eight-year period. Although No. 30 has since been combined internally with the adjoining No. 28, its original character and much of its architectural detailing survive intact.

Architecture and Appearance

The house is rectangular on plan with a projecting return to the rear. The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the return. A slender red brick chimney stack rises from the east side, has been rebuilt, and is centred on the ridge with seven terracotta pots. Cast iron half-round guttering on rise-and-fall brackets and circular downpipes serve both the front and rear elevations.

The principal elevation faces south and is built in Flemish bond red brick. It sits behind a low rendered plinth wall with capping stones, surmounted by replacement cast iron railings enclosing a small hard-surfaced forecourt. The window openings are square-headed and contain 6/6 timber sliding sash windows set within painted cement-rendered reveals with painted sills. The entrance doorway is formed by a three-centred arch with a moulded architrave and entablature supported by a pair of Doric order columns, with an Adam-style fanlight above a pair of half-leaf panelled timber doors. At ground floor level, two diminished windows sit to the right of the door; the first and second floors each have two windows, though these upper-floor openings are not aligned with those below.

The east and west sides of the building are abutted by the adjoining Nos. 28 and 32 Clarendon Street respectively. The north elevation is of red brick and rises three storeys, with an attic dormer to the left and a three-storey return built at half-landing height to the right. This rear return connects to the rear return of No. 28 via a corridor at first and second floor level. The upper floor of the return is finished in red brick while the lower floor levels are cement rendered. The fenestration on the rear is irregular, comprising 3/3 and 6/6 timber sliding sash windows, casement windows, and a 6/3 sliding sash to the attic dormer. The rear elevation was not fully visible at the time of survey.

Materials throughout are natural slate to the roof, cast iron rainwater goods, brick and render to the walls, and timber windows.

Setting and Mews

To the north end of the site stands a two-storey pitched-roof mews building. A laneway runs along the rear of the mews, providing access to the rest of the terrace. The well-preserved setting, including both the mews building and the consistent streetscape of the terrace, adds considerably to the interest of the property.

Historical Context

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period as part of the most ambitious town planning exercise in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619. The street follows a geometric pattern characteristic of Georgian urban development and, together with Great James Street and Queen Street, was developed in response to significant growth in the city's economy and population during the mid-19th century.

The Clarendon Street area had been entirely rural hinterland as recently as 1830, when the first edition Ordnance Survey map recorded few significant structures in the townland of Edenballymore. At that date, urban development had extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street and William Street. The only major construction north of the walls in the early decades of the 19th century had been isolated institutional buildings — the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College — with virtually no domestic architecture. The sole survivor from before the Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house of around 1815. Robert Simpson, writing in his Annals of Derry published in 1847, recorded that the entire district later covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street and surrounding lanes had originally been meadow ground without a house.

The street was originally named Ponsonby Street, after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. It had been renamed Clarendon Street by at least 1853, in honour of the Fourth Earl of Clarendon, George Villiers (1800–1870), who served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1847 and 1852. Although an 1847 plan of Londonderry depicted 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: Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street, and further leases for building ground on the northern side were advertised that same year.

No. 30, together with the adjoining Nos. 28–36, was built in 1862 as part of this second phase of development, constructed for John Allen, a wine merchant and property owner with business premises on Linenhall Street. When first completed, the three-storey house was valued at £25 and occupied by Dr William Browne, who operated a surgery in Pump Street. In 1871 the house passed to Alexander McCormick, whose estate continued to administer the property until the 1930s. By 1911, No. 30 was home to Robert Keys, a local timber merchant whose firm Robert Keys & Co. operated from premises on Waterloo Place; the census that year described the house as a first-class dwelling containing ten main rooms. By 1935 ownership had passed to Maude V. Keyes, who retained it until at least the 1970s, when the rateable value stood at £38.

In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and the surrounding area a Conservation Area, described as being of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. No. 30 was subsequently listed in 1979. The building continued in use as a private dwelling until 1987, when it was converted into offices. In 1992 it was unified with the adjoining No. 28 to provide enlarged office accommodation for the solicitors' firm McDaid, McCullough and Moore. The building continues to be occupied by that firm and remains united with No. 28.

Writing in 2013, 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," and that the "depressed arched recessed timber-framed doorways have simple segmented fanlights and thin Doric columns supporting entablatures." The majority of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street have been converted into professional offices, and few now remain in residential use.