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

No. 2 Princes Street is a mid-terrace Victorian townhouse built in a Georgian style, constructed between 1853 and 1856. It forms part of a small group of similar houses lining the south-east side of Princes Street, a narrow street running between Great James Street and Asylum Road on the west side of the River Foyle, in the townland of Edenballymore. The house sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. Although it is not listed as a building of special architectural or historic interest in its own right, it is considered a significant feature within the conservation area, which offers a more appropriate level of protection for a building of this character.

The house is two storeys over basement with an attic, two bays wide, and rectangular on plan. It is built in hand-made red brick laid in English Garden Wall bond with cement pointing. To the rear there is a small two-storey rendered projecting return with a lean-to slate roof, making the rear elevation effectively three storeys with attic. The roof is covered in natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles. Two red brick chimney stacks, both rebuilt, rise from the north-east and south-west sides and carry circular buff and terracotta clay pots. Half-round uPVC guttering on rise-and-fall brackets runs along the front elevation.

The principal elevation faces north-west and fronts directly onto the pavement. All window openings are square-headed, set on painted masonry sills with painted rendered reveals. The ground floor layout is notably irregular: the single window opening, positioned to the right of the entrance, does not align with the window bays on the floors above. This ground-floor window contains a two-over-two timber sliding sash with horns. The entrance doorway is slightly recessed and square-headed, flanked by engaged columns of the Doric order. The door itself is a raised-and-fielded four-panel painted timber door with a projecting dentilled cornice above and a single-pane transom light over it. The door opens onto a threshold one concrete step up from the pavement. On the first floor, the windows are six-over-six timber sliding sashes with horns. The south-west and north-east elevations are party walls shared with the adjoining No. 1 and No. 4 Princes Street respectively.

The rear south-east elevation has a smooth plain rendered unpainted finish to the upper floors, as does the rear return. Window openings to the rear are square-headed on masonry sills, with an irregular fenestration pattern. All rear windows have been replaced with uPVC casements, and uPVC rainwater goods serve the rear elevation.

The house has a long narrow rear yard and garden enclosed by a wooden fence.

Princes Street itself has a well-documented history. The street originally formed part of the Lower Road, a route recorded on maps as early as 1689 which extended from the Walled City to Pennyburn Mills. It was first recorded by the name Lower Road in 1847 and was renamed Princes Street in 1862 following the death of Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert, on 14th December 1861. The surrounding streets — Great James Street, Queen Street and Clarendon Street — were laid out in response to significant economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 records the area of Edenballymore as largely rural hinterland, and as late as 1847, the historian Robert Simpson described the district that would become Great James Street and its surroundings as having originally been meadow ground without a house. In the early decades of the 19th century, the only substantial buildings north of the city walls were isolated structures such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum and Foyle College. The only building in the Clarendon Street Conservation Area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency-style house built around 1815. From the late Georgian period onwards, uniform rows of three-storey townhouses were constructed in the area, which quickly became the preferred residence of the city's merchant and professional classes.

No. 2 Princes Street does not appear on the 1848–49 Ordnance Survey Town Plan or the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, but was recorded by 1856 in Griffith's Valuation. Nos. 1 to 4 Princes Street were leased by Edward Collum, a local butter and egg merchant with business premises on Bank Place, and each was initially valued at £12. The first recorded occupant of No. 2 was Samuel Jones, whose family remained at the address until 1873, when the house passed to a Mr. Patrick Neelis. Occupancy continued to change frequently over the following decades. The annual revisions town plan of around 1873 to 1910 depicted the building in its current form, including the single-storey rear return as it then stood. By 1911 the house was occupied by Joseph Strunks, a local baker; the census building return for that year described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of six rooms. Ownership of Nos. 1 to 4 Princes Street passed to a Mr. Joseph Brown by 1913, and remained in the Brown family until the 1950s, when it passed to H. H. K. Skipton. The Strunks family continued to occupy No. 2 until the 1970s. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland, carried out between 1936 and 1957, the rateable value of the house was raised to £15, and was further increased to £17 by the end of the Second Revaluation, which ran from 1956 to 1972. Princes Street was included in the Clarendon Street Conservation Area in 1978, designated as an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance.