6 College Terrace, Rock Road, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 7NZ

No. 6 College Terrace is a Victorian mid-terrace redbrick townhouse of two storeys with an attic, built in 1889–90 as one of a row of thirteen similar houses lining the eastern side of College Terrace. The street curves gently near the junction of Rock Road and Strand Road, on the north side of the city centre and on the eastern bank of the River Foyle. The terrace faces west onto the grounds of the University of Ulster at Magee College, separated from the campus by a low schist wall topped with plain iron railings and backed by mature trees. No. 6 is flanked by No. 5 to the north and No. 7 to the south, both of which are also listed.

The house is rectangular on plan with a projecting two-storey rear return. The principal west-facing elevation is two bays wide and built in Flemish brick bond. It is ornately finished with Victorian industrial brickwork in contrasting colours: a dentilled brick cornice at eaves level, black brick dressings below it, and continuous decorative brick stringcourses in contrasting colour at both ground- and first-floor levels and again below the dormer window. All openings are headed with red and black brick voussoirs. On the ground floor there is a single segmental arch-headed window opening; on the first floor there are two segmental arch-headed window openings; and at dormer level there is a single small semicircular arch-headed window, centred on the elevation. The entrance is a semicircular arch-headed doorway, one step up from the pavement, fitted with a painted four-panel timber door. The door surround has moulded timber architraves flanked by scrolled brackets with decorative leaf detail, supporting a slightly projecting cornice with a plain fanlight above. Ground- and first-floor windows are 4/2 timber sliding sashes, and the dormer above also has a small 4/2 sliding sash. All sills have a painted finish. Cast-iron guttering and circular downpipes serve the front elevation.

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate — re-slated in Bangor Blue slates during a 1998 renovation — with terracotta clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the rear return, and a small rooflight to the rear. A large two-stage redbrick chimney stack rises from the north side, centred on the ridge, and is fitted with clay pots.

The rear east elevation is cement-rendered and painted. A uPVC casement window on the first floor is visible from the rear alleyway, which runs the full length of the terrace providing access to the rear yards; the remainder of the rear elevations were not visible to the surveyor at the time of survey.

College Terrace was originally laid out by the Trustees of Magee College in 1889–90 to provide accommodation for college employees and students. Magee College had opened in 1865 as a Presbyterian seminary and became a constituent college of the Royal University of Ireland in 1879 under the name the Presbyterian Theological College. The development of the terrace formed part of a broader wave of building activity between 1881 and 1911 stimulated by the expansion of the Magee campus, during which three professors' houses were also constructed to designs by Young & Mackenzie, W. A. Barker, and Robinson & Davidson. The wider northward expansion of Londonderry had begun in the mid-19th century with Georgian-style terraces on Great James Street, Queen Street, and Clarendon Street, driven by economic prosperity from the 1860s to the end of the 19th century.

The first recorded occupant of No. 6 was a Mr Hudson Henderson. By 1911 the house had passed to William Hamilton Weir, a local jeweller and hardware merchant, whose census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of six rooms. The Annual Revisions set the total rateable value at £10. Weir had vacated the house by the 1930s, when a Mr Wilson Gamble was recorded as occupant. The rateable value rose to £20 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) and was further increased to £28 by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72). Within a decade of the terrace's construction, the majority of houses had passed to occupants unconnected with the college. Since Magee's incorporation into the University of Ulster in 1969, most houses along College Terrace have been converted to multiple-occupancy student accommodation, a change attributed in the Magee Conservation Area Design Guide to the negative impact of Strand Road bars and nightclubs on residential quality. No. 6 had itself been converted to a house of multiple occupancy by the 1990s.

In 1998, the house underwent a renovation that included the restoration of its original sliding sash windows, repointing of the exterior brickwork, and re-slating of the roof in Bangor Blue slates.

Nos. 1–13 College Terrace were listed in 1980. The terrace was incorporated into the Magee Conservation Area in 2006 and identified as a zone of distinct character within it, alongside the Rock Road and part of Northland Road. The terrace's gentle curve represents a departure from the earlier rectangular squares at Crawford Square and De Burgh Terrace. The group of thirteen houses carries group value as a significant feature of the Magee Conservation Area. The setting of No. 6 is noted for the urban tree-lined green it overlooks to the west, with the low schist wall forming the Magee College boundary lending what has been described as the feeling of an oasis to a small space.