17 Clarendon St., Londonderry

17 Clarendon Street is a mid-Victorian mid-terrace townhouse of two bays and three storeys with attic, built in 1874 alongside Nos. 19 and 21 Clarendon Street. It shares group value with Nos. 5–15 and 19–73 Clarendon Street (excluding No. 53), a terrace of twelve predominantly brick-faced townhouses built over a twenty-one year period along the south side of the street. Nos. 17, 19 and 21 are distinctive in character and were the last properties to be built in this terrace. The building is located within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. It has been converted to office use, which has resulted in some modernisation of the interior, though its original character and much of its detailing survive.

The plan is rectangular with a projecting rear return. The principal elevation faces north, set behind a low-level painted rendered boundary wall surmounted by replacement metal railings.

The roof is pitched natural slate with a dormer window to both the front and rear, and terracotta clay ridge tiles to the main roof and to the rear return. Two large cement-rendered chimney stacks rise from the east and west sides, centred on the ridge, each with seven clay pots. Rainwater goods are cast iron.

The principal front elevation (north) is painted render at ground floor level and red Flemish bond brick to the upper floors, with a rendered band at eaves level. All windows are 1/1 timber sliding sash — square-headed at ground floor and segmental-arched to the upper floors — unless otherwise noted. The entrance doorway has a square-headed opening surmounted by a projecting moulded cornice supported by a pair of pilasters painted in a contrasting colour, with console brackets featuring acanthus leaf detail to either side. The doors themselves are paired half-leaf two-panelled painted timber with a plain square-headed overlight. To the left of the door is a single tripartite (1/1, 1/1, 1/1) timber sliding sash window surmounted by a hood mould supported by four console brackets with acanthus leaf detail, also painted in a contrasting colour. The first and second floors each have two windows, which are not aligned with the ground floor openings. The first floor windows have a continuous sill course and painted moulded surrounds with keystone detail. The second floor windows have painted moulded surrounds.

The east and west elevations are abutted by the adjoining buildings at Nos. 15 and 19 Clarendon Street. The south (rear) elevation is cement rendered and runs three storeys with attic. The cement-rendered rear return is built at half-landing height, with a door opening into an enclosed rear yard. The fenestration to the rear is irregular, combining timber sliding sash and casement windows. At attic level there is a dormer set back within the main roof. The rear elevation was not fully visible at the time of survey.

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with construction of the first dwellings beginning around 1853. The area now occupied by the street was originally rural hinterland: the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore records few significant structures, and by that date the city's streets extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street and William Street. The only major construction north of the walls in the early 19th century had been isolated institutional buildings — the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum and Foyle College — with little or no domestic architecture in the same period. The one building in the area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house constructed around 1815, which according to Calley is "a pleasing composition which offers a gentle rebuke to some of the exuberance of later nearby buildings … one of its pleasant features is that it opens a gap in the long terraces." Robert Simpson recorded in his Annals of Derry (1847) that the district covered by Great James's Street, William Street, Little James Street and the surrounding lanes originally comprised meadow ground without a house.

The development of this part of Londonderry was driven by a period of growth in the city's economy and population during the mid-19th century. John Hume notes that between 1825 and 1850 "reconstruction of the city's buildings [within the walls] took place alongside the development, for the first time, of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore." Clarendon Street, together with Great James Street and Queen Street, followed a geometric street pattern characteristic of Georgian urban development, and the project represented the most ambitious town planning in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619. The construction of uniform rows of three-storey townhouses quickly established a new affluent quarter favoured by the city's merchant and professional classes.

The O'Hagan plan of Londonderry of 1847 depicted the proposed layout of the street — then known as Ponsonby Street, named after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe — at least a decade before it was completed. By the 1850s the street had been renamed Clarendon Street in honour of George Villiers (1800–1870), the Fourth Earl of Clarendon and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1847 and 1852. The second edition Ordnance Survey map confirms the renaming had taken place by at least 1853. Although the 1847 plan showed Clarendon Street extending from the quay up to Francis Street, only the lower section between the Strand Road and Queen Street had been laid out by 1853. Development progressed slowly through the 1850s: in 1851 Skipton and Miller advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street and Patrick Street to let in perpetuity, and Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street. Additional leases for building ground on the northern side of the street were advertised in that same year.

Nos. 17–21 Clarendon Street were constructed in 1874, approximately two decades after the initial development of the street, and as a result the three buildings display a clear Victorian character in contrast to the neighbouring Georgian-style terraces. They were built for Forrest Reid, a local solicitor with business offices on Richmond Street, and the Annual Revisions record that No. 17 was originally valued at £36 in 1874. Between 1874 and 1891 the house was occupied by Joseph Orr, a local grocer. The 1901 census building return described the residence as a second-class dwelling consisting of eight rooms with a stable as its sole outbuilding. Ownership remained with the Reid family until at least 1931, but by 1935 the house had been purchased by a Mr J. H. N. Johnston, at which point its value was increased to £60 under the First General Revaluation. Between 1935 and 1956 ownership passed to a Mr F. W. Craig, who converted the former dwelling into a private surgery for the medical practice of Dr Joy Little. As a result of this change of use, the value of the property was slightly increased to £64 at the cancellation of the Second General Revaluation in 1972. In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and its surrounding streets a Conservation Area, described as "an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance." No. 17 was subsequently listed in 1979. Internal renovations were carried out for the medical surgery in 1993. In 2013, Calley described Nos. 17–21 as "terrace houses, being a variation on the other houses on the street … the fenestration somewhat irregular [whilst] the outer buildings have tripartite ground floor windows and the ground of each is rendered." Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses on Clarendon Street are now occupied as residences; the majority were converted to offices for dentists, solicitors and accountancy firms in the late 20th century. No. 17 continues in office use.