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

No. 1 Princes Street is a Victorian end-of-terrace townhouse built in the Georgian style in red brick, constructed around 1853 to 1856 as part of a small group of houses together with the adjoining Nos. 2 and 4 Princes Street. It stands 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, and forms part of a terrace of similar street-fronted houses lining the south-east side of the street. The building sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area.

The house is two storeys over a basement, with an attic, and is rectangular on plan. Its principal elevation faces north-west. To the rear there is a small two-storey rendered projecting return with a lean-to slate roof, and the rear elevation as a whole reads as three storeys with an attic. The roof is finished in artificial 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 clay pots. Half-round uPVC guttering runs along the front elevation.

The principal north-west elevation is built of hand-made red brick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing. All window openings are square-headed, set on painted masonry sills with painted rendered reveals. The arrangement of openings on the ground floor does not align with the window bays on the floors above. On the ground floor, a single bay to the right of the entrance doorway contains a six-over-six timber sliding sash window with horns. The entrance is a square-headed door opening, slightly recessed, 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 the door. The threshold is one concrete step up from the pavement. At first-floor level there are six-over-six timber sliding sash windows with horns.

The north-east side is adjoined to No. 2 Princes Street. The south-west gable end is blank, finished in unpainted cement render, and topped by a rebuilt red brick chimney stack. The rear south-east elevation is finished in smooth plain unpainted render on the upper floors, 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. uPVC rainwater goods serve the rear elevation. A flat-roofed dormer window sits to the right side of the roof, with artificial slate to its cheeks and a timber casement window.

The setting is a long, narrow rear yard with a garden enclosed by a rendered wall. The house fronts directly onto the pavement.

Princes Street itself has a long history. The street occupies what was originally known as the Lower Road, a route recorded on maps as early as 1689 and one that extended from the Walled City to Pennyburn Mills in the 18th century. It was first named Lower Road on records from 1847 and was renamed Prince's Street in 1862 following the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, 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. As the historian John Hume notes, during the period 1825 to 1850 reconstruction within the city walls occurred alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore shows the area as essentially rural, with urban development extending no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. Robert Simpson, writing in The Annals of Derry in 1847, recorded that the entire district then covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street, and neighbouring lanes had originally been meadow ground without a single house. In the early decades of the 19th century, the only significant construction north of the walls comprised isolated institutional buildings: 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 constructed around 1815. Development of housing in the area began in the late Georgian period and continued into the Victorian era, with uniform rows of three-storey townhouses establishing a new affluent neighbourhood that became the preferred residence of the city's merchant and professional classes.

No. 1 Princes Street was not depicted on either the 1848–49 Ordnance Survey Town Plan or the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, but the terrace had been completed by 1856 when it was recorded 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 property was initially valued at £12. The first recorded occupant of No. 1 was a Mr. Charles Keele, who remained at the address until around 1865. The occupancy changed several times over the following decade until 1879, when William Henderson, a National School teacher, acquired the property. Henderson remained at No. 1 Princes Street until his death in 1890. The terrace was recorded on the Annual Revisions Town Plan of around 1873 to 1910, showing the house in its current layout. By 1911, the Census of Ireland records that Joseph Doherty, a local dentist, was residing at the address; the census 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 his family retained the terrace until the 1950s when it passed to H. H. K. Skipton, while the Doherty family continued to reside at No. 1 until at least 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 increased to £15, and was further raised to £17 by the end of the Second Revaluation, which ran from 1956 to 1972. In 1978, Princes Street was included within 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.