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

46 Clarendon Street is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey with attic, red brick Georgian-style townhouse built in 1863. It forms part of a group with Nos. 6–44 and 48 Clarendon Street, a run of eleven similar Georgian-style townhouses constructed over an eight-year period that lines the north side of the street. The building retains much of its original character and detailing, and sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, whose well-preserved setting adds to its interest.

Architectural Description

The house is rectangular in plan with a projecting rear return. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, and a large rebuilt red brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge. Cast-iron guttering runs along the front elevation.

The principal (south) elevation faces onto Clarendon Street and is built in Flemish bond brickwork. All windows are six-over-six timber sliding sashes set within square-headed openings with painted cement rendered reveals and painted sills. The entrance doorway has a three-centred arched opening with a moulded cornice supported by Doric columns on either side of a four-panelled painted timber door, with a plain fanlight above. At ground floor, two diminished windows sit to the right of the door; the first and second floor windows above are not aligned with the ground floor openings.

The property is bounded on the east and west by the adjoining Nos. 44 and 48 Clarendon Street. The north (rear) elevation is cement rendered, three storeys in height, with an attic dormer to the left and a three-storey rear return to the right that has a door opening onto the rear yard. The fenestration on the rear is irregular. The three-storey rear return is abutted by a single-storey extension with a lean-to slated roof.

The front of the property is set behind a low cement rendered wall with replacement painted metal railings above. Two shallow concrete steps lead to the front entrance, with a painted cast-iron boot-scraper to the right. There is an enclosed yard to the rear.

Historical Context

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period as part of an ambitious programme of urban expansion outside the historic walled city of Londonderry. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 records that the Clarendon Street area — in the townland of Edenballymore — was still rural hinterland at that date, with urban development having extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. The only significant structures north of the walls in the early 19th century were isolated institutional buildings: the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College. The sole domestic building predating the Victorian development in this area is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house of around 1815, described by Calley 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 his Annals of Derry (1847), recorded that the district later covered by Great James's Street, William Street, Little James Street, and surrounding lanes had originally comprised "meadow ground without a house." The development of housing in this area began in the late Georgian period and accelerated into the Victorian era, driven by growth in Londonderry's economy and population. John Hume notes that between 1825 and 1850 reconstruction within the walled city proceeded alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore. The resulting terraces of uniform three-storey townhouses quickly became the residence of the city's merchant and professional classes.

Clarendon Street, Great James Street, and Queen Street were laid out on a geometric street pattern characteristic of Georgian town planning — the most ambitious planning exercise in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619. A plan of Londonderry dating from 1847, which depicted the proposed street layout at least a decade before it was completed, recorded the street under its original name of Ponsonby Street, named after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. 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 that the renaming had taken place by at least 1853.

Although the 1847 plan showed the street extending from the quay up to Francis Street, only the lower section between Strand Road and Queen Street had been laid out by 1853. Progress was slow throughout the 1850s. In 1851, Skipton and Miller had advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street, and Patrick Street to be let in perpetuity. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1856, only nine dwellings had been constructed along the entire length of the street. That same year additional leases for building ground on the northern side of Clarendon Street were advertised.

No. 46 was built in 1863 as part of this second phase of development. It was constructed for a Mrs Blair, who was recorded as a member of Londonderry's nobility or gentry in the Ulster Town Directories, and was originally valued at £27. By 1901 the house was occupied by Benjamin King, a local grain and seed merchant with business premises on William Street; the census of that year described it as a first-class dwelling consisting of ten rooms. Ownership remained with the Blair family until the 1930s, when a Mr Robert Dowler was recorded as owner under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1935). Dowler continued to own the building until at least the 1970s, by which point its rateable value under the Second Revaluation (1956–72) had risen to £30.

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. 46 was subsequently listed in 1979.

Alterations and Recent History

A renovation in 1986 included the repointing of the brickwork and the reslating of the roof. By the late 20th century the house had been divided into self-contained flats; in 2001 it was converted into a dental surgery. A photograph dated 2002 records that a modern dormer window was removed from the front of the house at some point in the preceding decade.

In 2013, 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." Today, few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street remain in residential use; the majority have been converted into offices for dentists, solicitors, and accountancy firms.