Claremont Presbyterian Church, Claremont St, Northland Road, Londonderry

Claremont Presbyterian Church is a detached, symmetrical, gabled Gothic Revival former church built around 1904–05 in red brick and rendered masonry, designed by Matthew Alexander Robinson (1872–1929) and constructed by John Colhoun, whose business premises were on the Strand Road. The building stands on a slightly elevated site on the west side of Northland Road at its junction with Rock Road, near the north-west entrance to the university, within the Magee Conservation Area. It replaced Park Avenue Presbyterian Mission Hall and was designed to serve Scottish shipyard workers living in the terraced streets behind Northland Road. The church could accommodate a congregation of 500 and was completed on 3rd May 1905. It was subsequently converted to office use around 1998, when a rear extension was added. The listing extends to the church itself, together with its boundary gates, walls and railings.

Robinson was a local architect and engineer who had established an independent practice in the city in 1898 and was later elected City Surveyor in 1909. He was responsible for remodelling and extending a number of Presbyterian churches in the western counties of Ulster, but the Dictionary of Irish Architects records that Claremont was one of only two complete churches he designed from scratch, the other being Donagheady Presbyterian Church. The foundation stone was laid on 24th June 1904 by John Cooke, Chairman of the Londonderry Port and Harbour Commissioners, and a red sandstone date stone below the north window on the front elevation records this event, inscribed: 'THIS STONE WAS LAID BY / JOHN COOKE ESQ. D.L. / OF [THIS] CITY / ON 24TH JUNE 1904 / A.D. / JOHN COLHOUN / BUILDER. / M.A. ROBINSON, M.R.I.A.I. / ARCHITECTS'. The completed church was valued at £114 in the Annual Revisions, which also recorded that it was built on land owned by Ellen Graham of the adjoining Claremont House, now demolished. The church was listed in 1979, and its frontage was restored in 1989–90. By 1998, declining membership had left the building vacant. Conversion to offices at that time involved the removal of the original stained glass windows and their replacement with the current double-glazed units, and the addition of the modern rear extension.

The building is rectangular in plan, facing east, and is modestly sized yet richly decorated, combining Tudor, Gothic and Arts and Crafts devices in a manner characteristic of the High Victorian period. The roof is natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles, set behind a raised front gable with moulded concrete coping. Valley gutters are hidden behind parapet walls and discharge through cast-iron hoppers to plastic downpipes. The walls are of red brick laid in Flemish bond, combined with ruled-and-lined smooth rendered sections.

The symmetrical east-facing front elevation is the building's most elaborate feature. It is smooth rendered and framed by a pair of tall, red brick, crenellated clasping piers that rise above eaves level. A richly decorated shallow full-span entrance breakfront projects across the full width of this elevation. The gable above is filled by a large pointed-arched east window with a compound moulded surround rising from splayed brick jambs, divided by two red brick mullions with cusped red sandstone tracery, glazed with stained leaded glass and storm glazing, flanked by large red brick octagonal piers surmounted by panelled and pinnacled capstones and tapered masonry spires with poppy-head finials that rise above the apex of the gable. At the centre of the breakfront is a gabled entrance with moulded coping and terracotta floral panels to the spandrel. This entrance features a large pointed-arched opening with an exaggerated series of compound arches rising from splayed red brick walls and polished granite colonettes, with a trefoil-headed door opening containing a replacement double-leaf glazed door and overlight. The entrance gable is flanked by gableted angle buttresses with trefoil-headed coping, which in turn support square-plan crenellated blocks carrying flying buttresses. To either side of the entrance, a pair of slightly advanced red brick wall sections contain diminutive square-headed window openings with hood mouldings with foliate label stops, continuous nail-head sill mouldings and red sandstone tracery windows with stained leaded glazing and storm glazing; these sections are surmounted by rosette panels and diminutive crenellations, framed at either end by trefoil-headed buttresses. The entrance platform is finished in replacement granite paving.

The south nave elevation fronts onto Claremont Street and is four bays wide. It has double-height Tudor-arched window openings arranged in pairs — except for a single vestibule window — set within Tudor-arched red brick recesses with hood mouldings with foliate label stops and red brick toothed quoins, all between continuous nail-head and rosette terracotta string courses at sill and impost levels. Beyond the clasping pilaster to the right-hand east side, the walling is smooth render, unpainted. The north nave elevation is arranged as per the south, though it is enclosed by a timber fence.

The gabled west rear elevation is abutted by a full-height lean-to extension, with a small area to the south enclosed by decorative iron railings and a matching pedestrian gate. The main building is smooth rendered and unpainted, with moulded concrete coping to the raised gable matching the front. The wall extends beyond the coping at the apex with a rendered top. The lean-to extension is finished in ruled-and-lined cement render. A rectangular extract vent grille sits off-centre within the gable above the lean-to abutment, and the impost string course from the south elevation is returned to the west and stopped short of a uPVC hopper and downpipe on the right-hand side. The nave windows on both north and south elevations are replacement fixed-pane timber units.

The entrance is bounded by decorative iron railings on a low brick plinth wall, with matching iron gates supported on decorative red brick pillars with moulded gableted concrete capstones. A similar pedestrian gate and railing arrangement appears towards the rear of the Claremont Street elevation, on a cement-rendered wall with a concrete cap. A recent granite-paved platform and steps, with a universal access ramp and stainless steel handrail, have been installed within the site boundary at the front entrance. A later institutional ramp and rear extension are also present, though these detract somewhat from the building's character.

Despite the loss of some external fabric during conversion — most notably the nave windows — and the insertion of the rear extension, Claremont Presbyterian Church retains its overall composition and much of its architectural character. The 1970 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide described it as a church with "Gothic and Tudor overtones," noting that "the entrance façade is executed in heavily modelled brickwork, giving an almost cavernous effect to the doorway; sloping barges terminating against pinnacles crowning brick turrets." Its elaborate breakfront, prominent elevated corner site, and the enclosing boundary walls, gates and railings together make it one of the most distinctive buildings in the area.