10 Queen Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7EG

10 Queen Street, Londonderry — Former Townhouse, built c.1847

This is a mid-terrace, three-storey-with-attic, three-bay red brick former townhouse, built around 1847 as one of a uniform terrace of four similar properties. It shares group value with its neighbours at numbers 9, 11 and 12 Queen Street. Although Victorian in date, the building was designed in a Georgian style, consciously adopting the scale and proportions of earlier Georgian terraces. It sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area and is among the earliest buildings in this part of the city. The building has been converted to office use; some interior detailing has been lost, the wall-head dormer to the front has been removed, and replacement windows have been fitted to the rear — all of which detract from its character — but significant original fabric and historic character remain, including the two-room plan form, timber sliding sash windows to the front elevation, and a high-quality entrance doorcase.

Architectural Description

The building is rectangular on plan with a three-storey projecting rear return. The principal elevation faces east and forms part of a terrace lining the west side of Queen Street. The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. A red brick chimney stack with clay pots rises from the south side. Rainwater goods to the front (east) elevation consist of aluminium ogee guttering discharging into a cast iron hopper and circular downpipe; plastic rainwater goods serve the rear.

The principal east elevation is of red brick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing, set behind a low-level rendered plinth wall with cast decorative metal railings. All window openings are square-headed on painted masonry sills, with the ground-floor bays aligned directly below those on the floors above. The ground-floor window to the right of the entrance doorway is a 1-over-1 timber sliding sash. The entrance doorway has an elliptical arched head and is slightly recessed; it features engaged fluted columns of the Doric order on either side of a raised-and-fielded four-panel painted timber door, with a dentilled entablature and a webbed Adam-style fanlight above. The first and second floors each have 1-over-1 timber sliding sash windows. A large slate-clad central wall-head dormer with a slate pitched roof and a 1-over-1 timber sliding sash window sits at roof level.

The north and south sides of the building are abutted by numbers 9 and 11 Queen Street respectively. The rear (west) elevation is of three storeys finished in smooth unpainted render, as is the rear return, which has a slated pitched roof built off half-landing level. Window openings to the rear are square-headed on unpainted masonry sills, with an irregular fenestration pattern made up of a mix of replacement timber and uPVC casement windows.

Setting

Number 10 forms part of a terrace of four similar houses on the west side of Queen Street within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. The front entrance is reached via three concrete steps from pavement level, with a raised hardscape area to the right of the door enclosed by a smooth rendered wall topped by painted metal replacement railings. To the rear there is a small yard enclosed by a rendered wall with a roller shutter gate opening onto a shared alley.

Historical Context

Queen Street was originally laid out around 1840, with the first buildings constructed along the street by at least 1847. Its development — along with that of the adjoining Great James Street and Clarendon Street — was driven by a remarkable period of economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As the historian John Hume records, during the period 1825 to 1850 the reconstruction of buildings within the city walls took place alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore. Queen Street was the second major new street in this area, following Great James Street, which had been laid out around 1833.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore shows the Queen Street area as rural hinterland with few significant structures. By that date, the city's streets had extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street and William Street. In the early decades of the 19th century, the only major construction north of the walls had been isolated institutional buildings — the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum and Foyle College — with little or no domestic architecture in the area. The only building in the vicinity predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house built around 1815. Writing in 1847, Robert Simpson recorded in his Annals of Derry that the entire district later covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street and their surrounding lanes had originally been meadow ground without a single house.

Housing development in the 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 was established that quickly became the preferred address 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 town planning, and the project represented the most ambitious urban planning exercise in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.

O'Hagan's contemporary plan of Londonderry (1847) — which records the street as Queen's Street — shows that at least twelve houses had been built along the row by that date. Numbers 1 to 8 and numbers 9 to 12 Queen Street are among the earliest terraced dwellings within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. Number 10 is depicted on O'Hagan's 1847 plan with a rear return and an outbuilding, the latter since demolished and replaced with a modern return. The layout of numbers 9 to 12 had not changed by the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, and no further buildings had been added to the street in the intervening period.

Griffith's Valuation of 1856 records that numbers 9 and 10 Queen Street were owned by a Mr Samuel Jackson, and that number 10 was originally valued at £40. The first recorded occupant was Mr John Munn, a local magistrate and spinning mill owner, in 1856. The property continued to be administered by the Jackson estate until the 1930s. By the First General Revaluation of 1935, ownership had passed to a Mr John Thompson and the value had risen to £49. Thompson remained the recorded owner through to the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956 to 1972), by which time the value had fallen slightly to £44.

In 1970 the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide to Derry described numbers 9 to 12 Queen Street as "not as well handled" as numbers 13 to 16 Queen Street, which it considered the most impressive Georgian-style terrace in the area. In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated the mid-19th century streets and terraces of Queen Street, Great James Street and Clarendon Street as a Conservation Area, defined as an area of special architectural or historic interest whose character it is desirable to preserve or enhance. Numbers 9 to 12 Queen Street were subsequently listed in 1979.

Writing in 2013, Calley described numbers 9 to 12 Queen Street as a "setback terrace of four big brick three-and-a-half-storey, three-bay houses with rendered reveals and wide round-headed doorways," noting that numbers 9 to 11 have inset Doric doorcases under spiderweb fanlights and 1-over-1 timber sash windows, and observing that numbers 9 to 11 have wall-head dormers which "look a little out of place on the traditional Georgian facades."

Few of the mid-19th century townhouses along Queen Street remain in residential use. The majority were converted to offices for dentists, solicitors and accountancy firms during the late 20th century. Number 10 was converted into residential flats in 1980 when a Mr McCormack took over ownership, but had subsequently been converted to office use for a local solicitors firm by the time of the second survey.