4 Princes Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7EY

4 Princes Street is a mid-terrace Victorian townhouse built in a Georgian style between 1853 and 1856, located on the east side of Princes Street, a narrow street linking Clarendon Street and Great James Street on the west side of the River Foyle in Londonderry. It forms part of a group of eight similar houses lining that side of the street and was built at the same time as the adjoining Nos 1 and 2 Princes Street. Although it does not meet the statutory test for listing as a building of special architectural or historic interest, it is a significant feature within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, which provides the more appropriate level of protection.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The building is two storeys over a basement with an attic, constructed in red brick, and is rectangular on plan. Its principal elevation faces north-west and fronts directly onto the pavement. To the rear there is a small two-storey rendered projecting return with a lean-to slate roof, giving the rear elevation an effective three-storey height.

The roof is natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles. A red brick chimney stack with circular terracotta clay pots rises from the south-west side. Half-round cast-iron guttering on rise-and-fall brackets runs along the front elevation, terminating to a circular cast-iron downpipe.

The principal north-west elevation is built in hand-made red brick laid in English Garden Wall bond with cement pointing. All window openings are square-headed, set on painted masonry sills with painted rendered reveals. The ground floor openings are not aligned with the window bays on the floors above. On the ground floor, a single window opening to the right of the entrance doorway contains a 6/6 timber sliding sash window with horns. The square-headed entrance doorway is slightly recessed and flanked by engaged plaster painted columns of the Doric order. The door itself is a raised-and-fielded four-panel painted timber door beneath a projecting dentilled cornice, with a modest glazed transom light over it incorporating horizontal and vertical glazing bars. The door opens onto a threshold one concrete step up from the pavement. At first floor level there are 6/6 timber sliding sash windows, also with horns.

The south-west and north-east elevations are party walls adjoining Nos 2 and 6 Princes Street respectively. The south-east rear elevation is of smooth plain rendered unpainted finish, as is the rear return. Window openings to the rear are square-headed on masonry sills, with an irregular fenestration pattern and replacement timber casement windows throughout. Rainwater goods to the rear elevation are uPVC.

To the rear of the property is a long narrow yard with a garden enclosed by a wooden fence. Full access to the rear was not possible at the time of survey.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Princes Street follows the line of the old Lower Road, a route recorded on maps as early as 1689, which in the 18th century extended from the Walled City to Pennyburn Mills. The street was first recorded by the name Lower Road from 1847 and was renamed Princes Street in 1862 following the death of Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert, on 14th December 1861.

The surrounding area, in the townland of Edenballymore, was originally rural hinterland. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 shows that urban development had extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street and William Street at that date. As Robert Simpson noted in The Annals of Derry (1847), all the district now covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street and the numerous lanes in that vicinity had originally comprised meadow ground without a house. In the early 19th century, the only significant construction north of the walls had been isolated institutional buildings, including the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum and Foyle College, with little domestic architecture. The only building in the Clarendon Street Conservation Area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency-style house constructed around 1815.

Growth in the economy and population of Londonderry in the mid-19th century — which John Hume describes as involving reconstruction of the city's buildings within the walls alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore between 1825 and 1850 — drove the laying out of Great James Street, Queen Street and Clarendon Street. With the construction of uniform rows of three-storey townhouses, a new affluent area quickly became established as the preferred residence of the city's merchant and professional classes.

No. 4 Princes Street does not appear on the 1848–49 Ordnance Survey Town Plan or on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, confirming it had not yet been built at those dates. It was first recorded in Griffith's Valuation of 1856, which noted that Nos 1–4 Princes Street were leased by Edward Collum, a local butter and egg merchant with business premises on Bank Place, and that each house was initially valued at £12. No. 4 was first occupied by a Mr Daniel Gillespie. Around 1862 the house passed to Jane Horner, who remained at the address until 1877.

The terrace was recorded on the Annual Revisions Town Plan of approximately 1873–1910. In 1911 the house was occupied by James McGarigle, employed as a general dealer; the census building return for that year described the property as a second-class dwelling consisting of six rooms. Over the following three decades the occupants changed with considerable frequency. Ownership of Nos 1–4 Princes Street passed to a Mr Joseph Brown in 1913, and Brown's family retained ownership until the 1950s, when it passed to H. H. K. Skipton. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the rateable value of No. 4 was increased to £16. In 1967 ownership passed to J. C. Gallagher, who converted the building into a number of self-contained flats. By the end of the Second Revaluation the total rateable value stood at £32.

In 1978 Princes Street was included in the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, designated as an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance.