33 Great James Street, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 7DF

33 Great James Street is a very fine three-storey-over-basement detached classical house, built around 1850 in the early-Victorian Georgian style. It is constructed principally of Barony Glen Sandstone — quarried locally near Dungiven and used widely across Londonderry, including in the Guildhall — together with Derry Schist, with brick and render to the flanks and rear. Rectangular on plan, it is one of the most imposing buildings on Great James Street and sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area.

The principal elevation faces north onto Great James Street, set behind a boundary wall with broad steps rising to the central entrance doorway. The ground floor of this north façade is finished with rusticated Barony Glen sandstone, with ashlar above from first-floor sill-course level, and quoin stones to all four corners. The entrance door is a four-panelled painted timber door with an elliptical fanlight above, framed by a dentilled cornice and frieze supported on double console brackets. The ground-floor windows are 2/2 timber sliding sash with margin panes. At first-floor level, 6/6 timber sash windows are set within classical moulded surrounds, each with a stone pediment supported on console brackets. The second-floor windows are 6/3 timber sash with plain stone surrounds.

The east elevation is rendered to first-floor level with red brick above, and has a dormer window to the hipped roof. It features a recessed ground-floor doorway with a single centrally positioned 6/6 timber sash window on each of the floors above. The south elevation is a four-bay smooth rendered façade with 6/6 timber sliding sash windows to the ground and first floors and 6/3 sash windows to the second floor. The west elevation is a three-bay smooth rendered façade overlooking the churchyard, with classical moulded window surrounds and a sill-course at first-floor level.

The roof is hipped natural slate with a pie-end platform, a projecting stone cornice to the eaves, and a chimneystack centred to the north end carrying six clay pots. Rainwater goods are cast iron throughout.

The interior survives only partially in terms of its original layout and detailing.

The building stands as one of two houses flanking Great James Street Presbyterian Church (a listed building in its own right), set back from the pavement behind a dwarf wall. To the south and east it is enclosed by a postal delivery office.

The house was not shown on O'Hagan's 1847 plan of Londonderry but had been built by 1853, when it appeared on the second edition Ordnance Survey map as a free-standing square-shaped building. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded it as owned by a Ms. Amelia Patterson, originally valued at £75, and leased that year to Robert Allen, a local insurance agent for Life Association Scotland. Its construction formed part of the early-Victorian expansion of this part of Londonderry, which also saw the laying out of Queen Street around 1847 and Clarendon Street around 1856. Great James Street itself had begun to be laid out from around 1833 in response to a period of significant economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. At the time of its completion, No. 33 was one of the grandest residences on the street, exceeded only by the neighbouring manse at No. 35.

In 1860 the house was converted into a schoolhouse known as the Strand House School, established as an intermediate school for young ladies at a time when Protestant high schools for girls were emerging across Ireland in response to growing demand for girls' secondary education. The school operated from No. 33 for over half a century. Valuation records continued to describe the building as a private dwelling until the 1920s, despite its educational use. The value of the property was increased to £84 in 1875 when a Ms. Margaret Allen took over the property and a new outbuilding was added to the rear, now demolished. The 1901 Census of Ireland recorded the building as a schoolhouse — a large first-class structure consisting of 21 main rooms — and confirmed that its pupils included girls from the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker and Episcopalian faiths, with no Roman Catholic scholars recorded in that year. A 1912 advertisement for the school stated that "special terms are made for sisters, the daughters of clergymen of all denominations, and for girls intending to teach," and boasted that the school had "always been recognised as one of the leading schools for girls offering, as it does, an education not inferior to any in the United Kingdom." By that date the school had extended its accommodation with new buildings including a fully equipped gymnasium, large recreation hall, chemical and physical laboratory, and bicycle storage room.

These new buildings were not extensions to No. 33 itself; the Strand House School had in fact moved to new premises on Asylum Road in 1905, leaving No. 33 vacant. The Asylum Road premises are now demolished. The school was ultimately forced to close in 1916 due to the effects of the First World War.

No. 33 remained vacant from 1905 until 1922, when it was acquired by Thomas May, who converted the ground floor into offices and storage space for his electrical engineering business and the upper two storeys into a small shirt factory. The building's rateable value stood at £79 by 1931, rising to £114 by the First General Revaluation of 1935, and to £264 by the end of the Second General Revaluation period of 1956–72, during which time it continued in use as a shirt factory. The building was listed in 1977 and in the following year was included in 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." Northern Ireland Environment Agency records note that the building was in use as a gymnasium and beauty salon in 1985, and that external repairs and redecoration were carried out in 1992. The building is currently vacant.

The Ulster Architectural Heritage Society described No. 33 as a "three-storey square-planned Georgian house of good but austere design" forming "a pleasing combination with the adjacent freestanding Presbyterian Church," noting that the first-floor windows have flat cornice hoods with scrolls while the centre window has a pediment, and that the ground-floor masonry is rusticated. The Natural Stone Database records that the stonework has been in poor condition, with the sandstone facing spalling on the Great James Street façade.