15 Queen'S St., Londonderry

15 Queen Street, Londonderry

No. 15 Queen Street is a mid-terrace, three-storey, three-bay Georgian-style townhouse with an attic over a basement, built in 1868 in red brick. It forms part of a terrace of four similar houses — Nos 13 to 16 Queen Street — lining the west side of Queen Street, and shares significant group value with those neighbours. The building is listed along with its cast-iron railings, and sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, where it makes a notable contribution to the character and historic authenticity of the streetscape. It was originally built as a private dwelling and was converted to office use in 1989. At the time of the most recent survey it was occupied by a firm of accountants.

Exterior

The principal elevation faces east onto Queen Street. The building is rectangular on plan with a three-storey projecting rear return. The front facade is built in red brick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing, set behind a low rendered plinth wall with sandstone coping. In front of this sits a run of painted decorative cast-iron railings with fleur-de-lys tops. All window openings on the principal elevation have square-headed flat-cut brick arches on painted masonry sills. On the ground floor, to the right of the entrance doorway, is a six-over-six timber sliding sash window. The first and second floor levels each have six-over-six timber sliding sashes, with the window bays aligned vertically throughout. A continuous sandstone string course runs at ground floor level.

The entrance doorway is slightly recessed under an elliptical arch head, flanked by engaged fluted columns with Ionic capitals. It has a four-panel painted timber door with a projecting entablature above and an elliptical fanlight with timber glazing bars. The door is reached by six stone steps rising from the pavement level. The basement level has smooth painted rendered walls and six-over-six timber sliding sash windows.

A large central roof dormer sits on the roofline, with a timber front, slated sides, a slated pitched roof, and a six-over-three timber sliding sash window. The eaves have a painted render flat band. The roof covering is natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, with cast-iron half-round guttering carried on iron drive-through brackets, terminating in a cast-iron hopper and circular downpipe to the front elevation. A large red brick chimney stack with ten terracotta clay pots rises from the south side.

The north and south sides of the building are abutted by No. 14 and No. 16 Queen Street respectively.

The rear west elevation is of three storeys finished in smooth unpainted render. The rear return has a monopitch concrete-tiled roof and smooth unpainted rendered walls. Original six-over-six timber sliding sash windows survive at first and second floor levels, though the dormer window to the rear return has been replaced with uPVC. The rear return was built at half-landing height. Window openings have plaster reveals on painted masonry sills. There is a six-over-six timber sliding sash to the second floor level and replacement timber casement windows to the rear return. A pitched slate roof with black clay ridge tiles and the large chimney stack with ten terracotta pots continues on this elevation.

Setting

The house fronts directly onto the pavement of Queen Street, as do all four houses in the terrace. To the rear there is a small yard enclosed by a schist wall, along with the two-storey rear return. The building sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area.

Historical Background

Queen Street was originally laid out around 1840, with the first buildings constructed along it by at least 1847. Its development — alongside the adjoining Great James Street and Clarendon Street — was driven by a period of economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. The historian John Hume noted that during the period 1825 to 1850, reconstruction within the city walls took place alongside the first development of housing outside them at Bogside and Edenballymore. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 recorded the Queen Street area as rural hinterland, with urban development at that date extending no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street and William Street. The only significant building constructed north of the walls in the early 19th century had been isolated institutions — the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum and Foyle College — along with Foyle Cottage (a Regency house of around 1815), which remains the only building in the area predating the early-Victorian development. Robert Simpson, writing in his Annals of Derry published in 1847, recorded that the entire district covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street and surrounding lanes had originally been open meadow ground without a single house.

Queen Street was the second major new street in the area, following Great James Street which had been laid out around 1833. The construction of uniform rows of three-storey townhouses created a new affluent quarter that rapidly became the preferred address of the city's merchant and professional classes. The street layout followed a geometric pattern characteristic of Georgian town planning, and the development as a whole represented the most ambitious exercise in urban planning in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619. O'Hagan's contemporary plan of 1847 recorded the street under its original name of Queen's Street (the name alternated throughout its history) and showed at least twelve houses already built along the row by that date. Nos 1 to 8 and Nos 9 to 12 Queen Street are among the earliest terraced dwellings in the Conservation Area, having been built by at least 1847.

The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853 did not yet show the later terrace of Nos 13 to 16, but construction of the row began almost immediately thereafter. Nos 13 and 14 were built between 1853 and 1856, No. 16 followed in 1865, and No. 15 was completed in 1868, filling the remaining gap in the terrace. Annual Revision records show that No. 15 was built for William John Foster, a local magistrate and Justice of the Peace, and was originally valued at £45. Foster also owned the adjoining No. 16, as recorded in Ulster Town Directories. The Foster family retained ownership of No. 15 until the 1970s. Under the First Revaluation of 1935, the rateable value was recorded at £41, rising to £52 by the end of the Second Revaluation period of 1956 to 1972.

In 1901 the house was occupied by Sir Newman Chambers, the Town Clerk for Londonderry. By 1911 it was the home of James Wallace Killen, a local surgeon. The 1911 census building return classified No. 15 as a first-class dwelling, comprising eleven rooms and having a stable as its sole outbuilding. The majority of Queen Street's townhouses were converted from residential use to professional offices in the late 20th century, and No. 15 followed this pattern when it was converted to office accommodation in 1989.

Nos 13 to 16 Queen Street were listed in 1979, having been designated as part of the Clarendon Street Conservation Area in 1978. The 1970 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide described the terrace as a fine, dignified Georgian group of four three-storey houses with attics, each entrance approached by a flight of steps spanning a basement area, the whole finished with neat trim railings. Writing in 2013, Calley described the terrace as among the finest in the city, competing with Nos 20 to 23 Crawford Square and Nos 56 to 60 Northland Road. He noted that the houses are somewhat grander versions of the earlier Nos 9 to 12 Queen Street, that the wide doorways are reached up stone steps spanning basement wells edged with period fleur-de-lys railings, and that each has a single gabled dormer. He observed that Nos 13 and 14 have Tuscan columns to their doorcases whilst Nos 15 and 16 have Ionic columns, and noted specifically that No. 15 has a plain fanlight rather than a segmented one, though its columned timber surround is particularly fine.