20 Clarendon Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7ET

No. 20 Clarendon Street is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey with attic, red brick Georgian-style townhouse built around 1853 to 1856. It forms part of a row of eleven similar early to mid-Victorian townhouses lining the north side of Clarendon Street, and has group value with Nos. 6–18 and 22–48 Clarendon Street, the full terrace having been built over an eight-year period. The building is located within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, and its well-preserved setting contributes to its overall interest. It represents the mid-19th century expansion of Londonderry and is a noteworthy example of the type of property erected during a period of significant growth in the city's economy and population.

EXTERIOR

The building is rectangular on plan, with a projecting two-storey rear return abutted on the north side by a later single-storey flat-roofed block. The principal elevation faces south onto Clarendon Street and is set behind a low rendered wall with painted sandstone coping; two steps lead up to the entrance. The terrace steps up at each house to follow the contour of the hill, and each property has a red brick rectangular-section chimney to the east. No. 20's chimney is red brick with buff clay pots.

The roof is pitched natural slate with angled black clay ridge tiles. There are three rooflights to the south and a single dormer to the rear north. Cast iron semi-circular guttering and square hoppers discharge to circular-section downpipes.

The south elevation is laid in Flemish brick bond. The windows are square-headed, comprising two 6/6 timber sliding sash windows to the ground floor and two 6/6 timber sliding sash windows to both the first and second floors, all with window horns. The entrance is a three-centred arched opening with a moulded architrave and entablature supported by Doric columns on either side of a four-panelled painted timber door, with a segmental fanlight above. The door is fitted with brass furniture including a lion knocker. An iron boot scrape and painted stone window cills complete the principal elevation. No. 20 is abutted to the east by No. 18 and to the west by No. 22.

The rear north elevation is three storeys of smooth cement render with an attic dormer to the left. The lower three-storey smooth rendered rear section to the right is abutted to the north by the single-storey flat-roofed extension, which is finished in painted smooth render and fitted with timber top-opening casement windows and uPVC rainwater goods throughout. The dormer and second-floor windows are original 6/6 timber sliding sashes without horns; the ground-floor and first-floor windows to the rear are replacement uPVC top-opening casements.

A door from the rear elevation opens onto a rear concrete yard, now much reduced in size, with a path leading to a two-storey outbuilding that forms the northern boundary of the site. This outbuilding has a pitched natural slate roof and square-headed top-opening timber casement windows. A rubble wall forms the eastern boundary with No. 18.

SETTING

The front of the property faces Clarendon Street and is bounded by a low rendered plinth wall enclosing a small gravel-surfaced area. To the rear is an enclosed yard with a laneway beyond providing access to the rest of the terrace.

INTERIOR

Despite the loss of some original internal historic detailing, the exterior retains much of its historic character.

MATERIALS

The roof is natural slate, rainwater goods are cast iron, the walling is brick, and the principal windows are timber sliding sash.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period as part of the most ambitious town planning project undertaken in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619. The street followed the geometric pattern characteristic of Georgian urban development, extending the city northward into what had previously been rural hinterland in the townland of Edenballymore. The first edition of the Ordnance Survey map of 1830 records the Clarendon Street area as open land, with the built extent of the city at that time reaching no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street and William Street. The only major structures north of the walls prior to the Victorian expansion were isolated institutional buildings, including the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College. The sole surviving domestic building from this earlier period in the vicinity is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house built around 1815.

Robert Simpson, in his Annals of Derry published in 1847, recorded that the area that would become Great James Street, William Street and their surrounding lanes had originally comprised entirely of meadow ground without a house. Development of housing in the area began in the late Georgian period and continued through the Victorian era, with uniform rows of three-storey Georgian-style townhouses establishing an affluent district that rapidly became the preferred residence of the city's merchant and professional classes. John Hume notes that between 1825 and 1850 reconstruction within the city walls proceeded alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore.

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, the Fourth Earl of Clarendon (1800–1870), Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1847 and 1852. The second edition of the Ordnance Survey map confirms the street had been renamed by at least 1853. Although a plan of Londonderry drawn in 1847 showed Clarendon Street extending from the quay up to Francis Street, only the lower section between the Strand Road and Queen Street had actually 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 at that time. In that same year, additional leases were advertised for building ground on the northern side of Clarendon Street.

No. 20, along with the adjoining Nos. 12–18, was among the earliest townhouses built on the street, erected before 1856 and first recorded in Griffith's Valuation in that year. This original terrace of five three-storey buildings was leased by the Reverend Henry Wallace, Moderator of the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster in 1839, and No. 20 was originally valued at £30. Its first recorded occupant was a Mr. William Hatrick, who lived there from 1856 until his death in 1878; his will described him as a Gentleman and noted that he owned other properties in the city. By the time of the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935, the entire row of Nos. 6–26 Clarendon Street had been purchased outright by a Ms. Jennie Steen, and the rateable value of No. 20 was increased to £36. Steen still owned the property by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), at which point the building remained in use as a private dwelling and had been slightly decreased in value to £35.

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. 20 was subsequently listed in 1979. Records note that repair work was carried out in 1984, when the building was reroofed and the brickwork to the front elevation was repointed. The single-storey rear extension was added in 1990.

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 — three-and-a-half storeys, two bays — with most ground floors rather inelegantly squeezing in a doorway with two reduced-scale window bays. He observed that the depressed arched recessed timber-framed doorways have simple segmental fanlights and thin Doric columns supporting entablatures. Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street remain in residential use; the majority were converted to offices for local dental, legal and accountancy practices in the late 20th century. No. 20 is currently occupied as office space for a mental health centre.