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

28 Clarendon Street, Londonderry

This is an end-of-terrace, two-bay, three-storey red brick Georgian-style townhouse with an attic, built in 1862 on the north side of Clarendon Street in the Edenballymore townland. It was built at the same time as the adjoining Nos. 30–36, forming part of a longer terrace of eleven similar houses that lines the north side of the street and was constructed over an eight-year period. The property shares group value with Nos. 6–26 and 30–48 Clarendon Street. It lies within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, and the listing covers both the house and its mews building to the rear.

Architecture and Exterior

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting return to the rear and an attached two-storey mews building. Its principal elevation faces south and sits behind a sloping, low rendered plinth wall with capping stones and replacement cast iron railings. The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles on both the main roof and the return. A slender red brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge, with seven terracotta pots. Cast iron half-round guttering on rise-and-fall brackets and a circular downpipe serve both the front and rear elevations.

The south (front) elevation is faced in Flemish bond brickwork above ground floor level, with smooth render at ground floor level. Window openings are square-headed, fitted with 6-over-6 timber sliding sash windows set within painted cement-rendered reveals and painted sills. The entrance doorway has a three-centred arched opening with a moulded surround, a moulded architrave and entablature supported by a pair of Doric order columns, an Adam-style fanlight, and a four-panelled timber door. The ground floor openings have moulded plaster surrounds with a vermiculated keystone and a shoulder-course between openings. There is a continuous rendered sill course to the first floor windows, and an approximately 0.5-metre-wide cement rendered strip runs from the first floor sill course to the eaves on the right-hand side. Two diminished windows sit to the right of the door at ground floor level, with two windows each to the first and second floors, though the upper-floor openings are not aligned with those below.

The east gable elevation is cement rendered, surmounted by a single large red brick chimney stack with seven terracotta pots. There is a single 6-over-6 timber sliding sash window at first and second floor level to the far left, and a single diminutive single-pane casement window at attic level to the far left.

The rear (north) elevation is three storeys with an attic dormer to the left, and a three-storey return to the right, which is built at half-landing height and steps down to a further two-storey extension that abuts the two-storey mews building at the rear of the site. The main block is red brick throughout, except for a cement rendered ground floor level and an approximately 0.4-metre-wide cement rendered strip to the left of the main block running from first floor level to eaves. The mews building is also cement rendered. The left bay of the rear elevation has a single 6-over-6 timber sliding sash at first and second floor level, surmounted by a 6-over-3 timber sliding sash in a slated dormer. A single ground floor opening was not fully visible at the time of survey. The rear return is surmounted by a single 3-over-3 timber window.

The three-storey portion of the east face of the rear return is two bays wide, with the left bay slightly recessed. It contains a multi-pane steel casement window at first floor left, surmounted by a bipartite timber sliding sash window (1-over-1 paired), and a 6-over-6 timber sliding sash window to the right at first and second floor levels, with the second floor window slightly diminished in height. A stainless steel flue rises between the two bays and terminates above eaves level, obscuring a diminutive square fixed-pane window at first floor level. The ground floor was not visible at the time of survey. The two-storey portion of the east face of the rear return is also two bays, each containing a single 6-over-6 timber sliding sash at first floor level; the ground floor was not visible at survey. The exposed north gable of the three-storey portion of the rear return is blank. The north face of the rear return abuts the mews building. The west face of the rear return was not visible at the time of survey. The west side of the main block is abutted by the adjoining No. 30 Clarendon Street.

Mews Building

The two-storey mews building to the rear of the site stands at right angles to the rear return. Its south face is abutted by the rear return to the left, and its right bay is blank at first floor level, with the ground floor not visible at survey. The east gable elevation is symmetrical, with a single 2-over-2 timber sliding sash window to each floor. The north face has a 1-over-1 timber sliding sash window to the first floor right. The west face is abutted by the mews building of No. 30 Clarendon Street.

Setting

The property forms part of a row of eleven similar Georgian-style early to mid-19th-century townhouses on the north side of Clarendon Street. The front of the building is bounded by the street and set behind a low rendered plinth wall with replacement cast iron railings enclosing a small hard-surfaced area. To the east of the site is a roughcast high boundary wall with a timber-sheeted door opening, which extends along Princes Street to enclose a rear yard. To the north end of the site is the two-storey pitched-roof mews building. A laneway runs along the rear of the mews building providing access to the rest of the terrace.

Materials

The roof is natural slate with cast iron rainwater goods. The walls are brick and render. Windows are a mixture of timber and steel.

Historical Background

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with the first dwellings commenced around 1853. The street, along with Great James Street and Queen Street, was developed in response to significant economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. The first edition of the Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore shows that the Clarendon Street area was then rural hinterland with few structures. At that time, the city's built extent reached no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. In the early decades of the 19th century the only significant construction north of the walls had been isolated institutional buildings — the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College — with very little domestic architecture. The only building in the area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house of around 1815. Robert Simpson, in his Annals of Derry (1847), recorded that the land later covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street and their surrounding lanes had originally been open meadow ground.

The initial development of housing in this area began in the late Georgian period and continued into the Victorian era. With the construction of uniform rows of neat three-storey townhouses, a new affluent neighbourhood quickly became established as the residence of the city's merchant and professional classes. The geometric street pattern of Clarendon Street, Great James Street, and Queen Street was characteristic of Georgian urban planning, and represented the most ambitious town-planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.

The 1847 plan of Londonderry, which depicted the proposed layout of Clarendon Street at least a decade before it was fully completed, recorded the street under its original name of 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 (1800–1870), the Fourth Earl of Clarendon and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1847 to 1852. The second edition of the Ordnance Survey map confirms that the renaming had taken place by at least 1853. Although the 1847 plan showed the street extending from the quay up to Francis Street, only the lower section between Strand Road and Queen Street had been laid out by 1853. Development progressed slowly through the 1850s: in 1851 building ground on Clarendon Street was advertised to let in perpetuity, and Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street. In that year, additional leases for building ground on the northern side of Clarendon Street were advertised.

No. 28 was constructed as part of this second phase of development, built together with the adjoining Nos. 30–36 Clarendon Street in 1862 for John Allen, a wine merchant and property owner with business premises on Linenhall Street. The three-storey house was originally valued at £25 and was first occupied by a Ms. Thompson in 1862. By 1901 it was occupied by William McCandless, a local magistrate and merchant; the census of that year described the house as a first-class dwelling with ten main rooms.

No. 28 remained in the ownership of the Allen family until the 1930s, when it passed to a Ms. Maude V. Keyes, who also owned the adjoining No. 30. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1935) raised the value of No. 28 to £52. By the time of the Second Revaluation (1956–72), the property had been converted into a nurses' home for the Northern Ireland Hospital Authority, who had purchased the building. In 1962 it was returned to use as a private dwelling, and by the end of the Second Revaluation its value stood at £44.

In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and its surrounding streets a Conservation Area, defined as an area of special architectural or historic interest whose character it is desirable to preserve or enhance. No. 28 was subsequently listed in 1979. In 1990 the property was converted from a dwelling into offices for the solicitors' firm McDaid, McCullough and Moore, who also occupied No. 30. The two properties were united into a single office in 1992 and continue to operate as a solicitors' office.

Writing in 2013, the architectural historian 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 … depressed arched recessed timber-framed doorways have simple segmented fanlights and thin Doric columns supporting entablatures." Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses on Clarendon Street are now occupied as private residences; most were converted into offices for local dentists, solicitors, and accountancy firms during the late 20th century.