6 Clarendon Street, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 7ET

No. 6 Clarendon Street is an end-of-terrace, two-bay, three-storey with attic, red brick Georgian-style townhouse, built in 1863. It forms part of a continuous terrace of eleven similar houses running along the north side of Clarendon Street, between Queen Street and Princes Street, and shares group value with Nos. 8–48 Clarendon Street, which were built over an eight-year period. The building retains its original character and much of its external detailing, and its well-preserved setting within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area adds further to its interest. It is a noteworthy example of the type of property built during a period of economic and population growth in the city of Derry in the mid-19th century.

ARCHITECTURE AND EXTERNAL DESCRIPTION

The house is rectangular on plan with a projecting brick return to the rear. The principal elevation faces south, set behind a low rendered plinth wall surmounted by replacement cast iron railings enclosing a small gravelled area. The roof is pitched natural slate with two rooflights to the front, black clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the return, and a slender red brick chimney stack rising from the east side, centred on the ridge and fitted with six clay pots. Cast iron half-round guttering on rise-and-fall brackets runs along the front elevation; cast iron rainwater goods serve the rear, with replacement uPVC to the outbuilding.

The principal south-facing front elevation is laid in Flemish bond brick. Window openings have cut brick flat arches, with 6/6 timber sliding sashes set within painted cement-rendered reveals and painted sills. To the left is a three-centred arched entrance doorway with a moulded surround and moulded entablature supported by a pair of Doric columns; above the four-panelled timber door is a simple glazed fanlight. To the right of the door are two diminished windows at ground floor level, with two windows each at first and second floor — these upper-floor openings are not aligned with those at ground floor.

The west side elevation is abutted by the adjoining No. 8 Clarendon Street. The north rear elevation is three storeys with an attic dormer to the left and a three-storey return to the right, built at half-landing height. The rear walls are in brick garden wall bond, with a rendered ground floor to both the main block and the return. Windows to the main block are 6/6 timber sliding sashes at ground, first, and second floor levels, with 6/3 timber sliding sashes to the third-floor stairwell and dormer. Windows to the return are replacement casements of various sizes. The return's north face has a window right of centre at first and second floor levels, with the ground floor obscured; the west face of the return is blank; the east face has a diminutive window at first and second floor levels, again with the ground floor obscured. The east side gable elevation is entirely blank.

To the east side of the building is a lane providing access to the rear of the terrace. A rendered wall between the eastern gable and the outbuilding contains a modern timber-sheeted door leading to the rear yard.

SETTING AND OUTBUILDINGS

The front of the property faces Clarendon Street, bounded by the low rendered plinth wall with replacement cast iron railings. To the rear is an enclosed yard with a two-storey stone-built mews building beyond, which has a pitched natural slate roof and a red brick gable with a modern garage door and a window at first floor level, the latter now boarded up. Two first-floor window openings to the north elevation of the mews are now blocked up, and the south elevation is obscured. A laneway runs along the rear of the mews building providing access to the rest of the terrace.

Materials: natural slate roof; cast iron rainwater goods to the main house, uPVC to the outbuilding; brick and render walling; timber windows.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The area now occupied by Clarendon Street was originally rural hinterland, recorded in the first edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore as having few significant structures. By 1830, the city's street development had extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. In the early decades of the 19th century, the only major construction north of the walls had been isolated institutional buildings — the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College — with little domestic architecture. The one building in the area that predates the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency-style house constructed around 1815, which Calley describes as "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, writing in The Annals of Derry (1847), recorded that "all the district now covered by Great James's Street, William Street, Little James Street … and the numerous lanes in that vicinity [originally comprised] meadow ground without a house." John Hume notes that during the period 1825–1850, "reconstruction of the city's buildings [within the city walls] took place alongside the development for the first time of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore." The laying out of Clarendon Street, Great James Street, and Queen Street followed a geometric street pattern characteristic of Georgian town planning, and represented the most ambitious project of urban development in Londonderry since the original construction of the walled city in 1613–19.

O'Hagan's 1847 plan of Londonderry depicted the proposed layout of the street — at that time still known as Ponsonby Street, named after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe — at least a decade before its completion. By the 1850s the street had been renamed Clarendon Street in honour of George Villiers (1800–1870), 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; Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street. In 1851 Skipton and Miller had advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street, and Patrick Street to be let in perpetuity, followed by a second drive in 1856 when additional leases were advertised for building ground on the northern side of the street.

No. 6 was erected in 1863 as part of this later phase of development, along with Nos. 8–10 and 22–26 Clarendon Street, completing the continuous terrace of eleven houses between Queen Street and Princes Street. Nos. 6–10 were constructed for John Allen, a wine merchant and property owner with business premises in Linenhall Street. The house was originally valued at £27 and was occupied in 1863 by a Ms. Margaret Miller. Throughout its history the occupants of Clarendon Street were drawn from the city's merchant and professional classes; in 1911 No. 6 was occupied by James Lynch, a local grocer, whose house was described in that year's census as a first-class dwelling consisting of eight main rooms.

No. 6 remained in Allen family ownership until at least the end of the Annual Revisions in 1931, by which time it was occupied by a Mr. William Porter and its rateable value had fallen to £24. Between 1931 and 1935, the entire row of Nos. 6–26 was purchased outright by a Ms. Jennie Steen. The First General Revaluation of 1935 recorded that Steen leased No. 6 to a Mr. John A. Adair, but by the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) ownership had passed to Adair himself. The value of the house had risen to £42 by 1935 but was slightly reduced to £38 by the end of the Second Revaluation.

In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets a Conservation Area, defined as "an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance." No. 6 was subsequently listed in 1979. Calley described Nos. 6–48 Clarendon Street as a "delightfully long red brick terrace of the mid-19th century … the buildings are nearly all the same, being three-and-a-half-storey, two-bay with most ground floors rather inelegantly squeezing in a doorway with two reduced scale window bays … depressed arched recessed timber-framed doorways have simple segmented fanlights and thin Doric columns supporting entablatures."

Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street are now used as residential dwellings; the majority were converted into offices for dentists, solicitors, and accountancy firms in the late 20th century. No. 6 Clarendon Street, however, continues in residential use. In 1998 the former private dwelling was converted into a number of self-contained apartments.