40 Great James Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7DA

40 Great James Street is a mid-Victorian end-of-terrace house built in 1871–72, situated on the north side of Great James Street in Londonderry — a steep hill running between St. Eugene's Cathedral to the west and Strand Road to the east. It forms part of a terrace grouping with its immediate neighbours at numbers 36 and 38, and together with the other houses of this era along the street it contributes to the character of the Clarendon Street Conservation Area.

The house is three storeys over a basement, two bays wide, and rectangular on plan. It is built in a Georgian style despite its Victorian date, finished externally in smooth painted render throughout. The pitched slate roof carries clay ridge tiles, and a chimney stack rises from the east side — rebuilt in modern red brick and fitted with six terracotta clay pots, with one pot missing. Cast iron half-round guttering on rise-and-fall brackets terminates at a swan-neck cast iron circular downpipe to the front.

The principal elevation faces south and is accessed directly from street level by a single step. The rendered walls are framed by smooth plaster band quoins to either side at first and second floor levels. Window openings are square-headed, set on painted masonry sills — with a continuous painted sill running across the first floor — and are glazed throughout with 6-over-6 timber sliding sash windows at ground, first, and second floor levels. The window bays on the upper floors align with those on the ground floor. The entrance doorcase is a particularly fine feature: it comprises timber panelled pilasters on plinth blocks, with plaster console brackets carrying acanthus leaf decoration to either side of a recessed four-panel raised-and-fielded timber door with a moulded timber cornice below a plain elliptical glazed fanlight.

The rear north elevation is also three storeys and finished in smooth painted render. A two-storey rear return is attached, finished in smooth painted render to most surfaces but with roughcast unpainted render to its north elevation; it is built at half-landing height relative to the main house and has a slated pitched roof with three Velux rooflights. Window openings at the rear are square-headed on painted masonry sills, and the fenestration is irregular, with a mix of original timber sliding sash windows to the main rear elevation and replacement timber casement windows to the rear return. A large red brick chimney stack with three terracotta clay pots rises from the north elevation of the return. A small single-storey lean-to shed with a slate roof and cast iron rooflight abuts the rear return, and a further small shed adjoins this, finished in painted pebble dash with a corrugated metal sheet roof and a timber door to the rear.

The east side of the building adjoins the neighbouring property at number 38. The west elevation is finished in smooth painted render with no fenestration and sits above a gated vehicle entrance to number 42. uPVC rainwater goods are used to the rear.

To the rear lies a large garden enclosed by a boundary wall of schist and red brick to the west, a masonry wall to the east, and timber sheeted gates to the north.

Internally, much of the original plan form survives, along with a considerable amount of original joinery.

Great James Street was first laid out around 1833, with construction beginning by at least 1835–37. Its development — along with the adjoining Queen Street (laid out around 1847) and Clarendon Street (around 1853) — was driven by a period of significant economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As the historian John Hume records, the years 1825–1850 saw reconstruction within the walled city alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore. Before this expansion, the area was entirely rural: the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore shows the Great James Street area as open hinterland, and Robert Simpson, writing in The Annals of Derry (1847), confirmed that the district had originally comprised meadow ground without a single house. The only structure in the conservation area predating this development was Foyle Cottage, a Regency-style house of around 1815. The laying out of these streets followed the geometric pattern characteristic of Georgian town planning and represented the most ambitious planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city in 1613–19. With their uniform rows of three-storey townhouses, these streets rapidly became the preferred address for the city's merchant and professional classes.

Number 40 was built in 1871–72 and first recorded in the Annual Revisions as part of a row leased by George Skipton, a local landowner of Beechill House who owned many of the plots on the north side of Great James Street. In the 1870s the property was occupied by James Riddell, a local butter merchant, and was valued at £26. The Annual Revisions Town Plan of around 1873–1910 depicted the building in its current layout, already possessing the three-storey rear return and outbuilding. Riddell remained at the property until 1888, when Peter McKinney, a poulterer, took up residence. By 1901 the occupant was George Davin, a box maker; the census return for that year classified the building as a first-class dwelling of ten rooms with a stable and coal house as outbuildings. Occupancy continued to change frequently in the following decades. By the 1930s, during the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), a Ms. Alice Cunningham had purchased the building outright, at which point it was valued at £33. By the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value had risen to £39. In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated the area as a Conservation Area, defined as one of special architectural or historic interest whose character it is desirable to preserve or enhance.