15 Clarendon St, Londonderry

15 Clarendon Street, Londonderry

This is a mid-Victorian mid-terrace two-bay three-storey townhouse with attic, built around 1861, situated on the south side of Clarendon Street within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. It was constructed as part of the second phase of the street's development, at the same time as Nos. 5–13 Clarendon Street, and forms part of a group of terraced townhouses that line the south side of the street, built over a twenty-one year period. Nos. 11, 13, and 15 are distinctive within this predominantly brick-faced terrace in being rendered and designed as a single unified composition, with stepped quoins at the two outer edges binding all three houses together visually. The conversion to office use has introduced some modernisation to the interior, but much of the building's original character and detailing survives.

Architectural Description

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. Its principal elevation faces north onto Clarendon Street and is set behind a low-level painted rendered boundary wall topped with replacement metal railings, enclosing a small hard-surfaced area.

The roof is pitched and slated, with black clay ridge tiles to the main roof and a large rendered chimney stack rising from the east, centred on the ridge and fitted with nine terracotta pots. Cast-iron guttering serves the front elevation.

The principal north elevation is finished in painted render: deeply ruled (rusticated) at ground floor level and smooth on the upper floors, with quoins to the right. All windows are square-headed one-over-one timber sliding sashes unless otherwise noted. The entrance doorway is set within a three-centred arch opening and features a recessed cornice supported by scrolled console brackets on pilasters to either side, with a painted timber four-panelled door and a plain fanlight above. To the left of the door is a single tripartite timber sliding sash window — arranged as three one-over-one lights — surmounted by a hood mould carried on scrolled console brackets. At first and second floor levels there are two windows per floor, not aligned with the ground floor openings. The first-floor windows have a continuous sill course and moulded surrounds.

The east and west elevations are abutted by the adjoining properties, Nos. 13 and 17 Clarendon Street respectively.

The south (rear) elevation is smooth cement rendered and rises three storeys with attic. To the left is a smooth-rendered three-storey pitched roof return built at half-landing height, which is abutted by a single-storey hipped roof rendered extension. The right bay of the rear elevation has, at ground floor, a single one-over-one timber sliding sash window with coloured leaded glass behind a metal security grille; above this, a six-over-six timber sliding sash window at first and second floor levels; and a two-over-two timber sliding sash window set within a pitched roof dormer at attic level. The exposed section of the left bay has a single six-over-three timber sliding sash window. The south face of the three-storey rear return, in its exposed section, has a single segmental-arched two-over-two timber sliding sash window with coloured glass margin panes at first floor level, surmounted by a single six-over-six timber sliding sash window; this section is abutted by a single-storey return. The east face of the return has a diminutive window opening at first and second floor levels; the ground floor was not visible at the time of survey. The west face of the return was not visible at the time of survey. The single-storey return has a blank south gable; its west face was not visible at the time of survey, while its east face has a door opening to the left, a window opening to the far left, and two window openings to the right.

Materials: natural slate roof; cast-iron rainwater goods to the front (north) elevation, uPVC to the south; rendered walling throughout; timber windows.

Setting

The front of the property faces north onto Clarendon Street, bounded by the painted rendered boundary wall and replacement metal railings described above. To the rear is an enclosed yard. A two-storey mews building occupies the rear of the site, though it is now roofless with its window and door openings blocked up. A small single-storey lean-to building with a corrugated metal roof abuts the right side of the north face of the mews building.

Historical Context

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period as part of an ambitious programme of urban expansion to the north of Londonderry's historic walled city. The First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 shows the Clarendon Street area — in the townland of Edenballymore — as largely rural hinterland. At that date, the city's streets had extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. The only significant structures north of the walls in the early 19th century were isolated institutional buildings: the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College. The sole domestic building in the area predating the Victorian development was Foyle Cottage, a Regency house of around 1815. As Robert Simpson recorded in his Annals of Derry (1847), the entire district that came to be covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street, and their surrounding lanes had originally comprised open meadow ground without a single house.

The development of housing in this area began in the late Georgian period and accelerated through the Victorian era, driven by growth in the city's economy and population — a process described by historian John Hume as involving the development, for the first time, of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore in the period 1825 to 1850. The resulting terraces of three-storey townhouses established a new affluent district that became the preferred address of the city's merchant and professional classes. Clarendon Street, Great James Street, and Queen Street followed a geometric street pattern characteristic of Georgian town planning, and the scheme represented the most ambitious exercise in planned urban development in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city itself between 1613 and 1619.

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), the Fourth Earl of Clarendon and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1847 to 1852. The Second Edition Ordnance Survey map confirms the name had changed to Clarendon Street by at least 1853. An 1847 plan of Londonderry had shown the street as proposed, extending from the quay up to Francis Street, but by 1853 only the lower section between the Strand Road and Queen Street had been laid out. Progress was slow through the 1850s: Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street. Building ground was being advertised to let in perpetuity on Clarendon Street as early as 1851 by Skipton and Miller, and further leases for ground on the northern side were advertised in 1856.

Nos. 5–15 Clarendon Street were built in 1861 as part of this second phase of development. Nos. 11–15 were constructed for William Stirling, a painter and glazier who operated from Pump Street. In 1861 No. 15 was originally valued at £32 and was occupied by a Mr Alexander Fox. By 1901 the occupant was William Kennedy, a retired school inspector, whose census return described the house as a second-class dwelling with eight rooms and a stable and coach house as its sole outbuildings. Following William Stirling's death in 1869, ownership of Nos. 11–15 passed by will to Hugh Stevenson, and the Stevenson family retained ownership of No. 15 into the 1970s. The First Revaluation increased the property's assessed value to £44 in 1935, but this had been reduced to £33 by the end of the Second Revaluation in 1972.

In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets a Conservation Area as an area of special architectural or historic interest whose character it is desirable to preserve or enhance. No. 15 was subsequently listed in 1979. In 2004 the building underwent extensive renovation works that included reslating of the roof, installation of the current rainwater goods, and replacement of its dormer. By the time of listing the property was in use as office premises for a local mortgage agency — a pattern typical of the street, where the majority of the mid-Victorian townhouses have been converted to professional and commercial office use.