42 Great James Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7DA

42 Great James Street is a Victorian end-of-terrace, two-bay, three-storey smooth rendered Georgian-style house, constructed between 1853 and 1856 as part of a terraced row with the adjoining Nos 44 and 46 Great James Street. It sits on the north side of Great James Street, parallel to Clarendon Street and on the west side of the River Foyle, within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. Although it does not meet the statutory test for listing as a building of special architectural or historic interest, it is considered a significant feature of the conservation area, which provides a more appropriate level of protection.

The building is rectangular on plan with a pitched natural slate roof and a tall chimney stack rising to the east. The principal elevation faces south and is accessed directly from street level, one step up from the pavement.

The south-facing principal elevation has smooth painted rendered walls with smooth plaster band quoins to the right. Window openings are square-headed, set on painted masonry sills, with a continuous painted sill running across the first floor. All three floors — ground, first, and second — are glazed with 6/6 timber sliding sash windows, and the bays on the ground floor align with those above. The entrance doorway has an elliptical arch head and is slightly recessed, flanked by engaged fluted columns of the Ionic order. The door itself is a raised-and-fielded four-panel painted timber door with a dentilled entablature and a segmental fanlight with timber glazing bars above. The front elevation is finished with cast iron half-round guttering on rise-and-fall brackets, terminating at a cast iron swan-neck circular downpipe to the right. A red brick chimney stack to the east side carries seven clay pots. To the right of the principal elevation, a rendered painted wall with a concrete capping and a roller garage door adjoins No. 40.

The north elevation to the rear is of two storeys, built off the half-landing level of the main house, with smooth unpainted render and a slated pitched roof. The window openings are square-headed on unpainted masonry sills, with an irregular fenestration pattern. Replacement timber casement windows serve the rear and the rear return. A large red brick chimney stack on the north elevation of the return carries three terracotta clay pots. A small single-storey lean-to shed with a slate roof and a cast iron rooflight is attached to the rear return. Beyond this is a large garden enclosed by a schist and red brick boundary wall to the west, a masonry wall to the east, and timber sheeted gates to the rear.

The east elevation is of red brick laid in English Garden Wall bond with cement pointing and has no window openings. Vehicular access runs along this side. The west side is joined to the neighbouring No. 44 Great James Street. The pitched slate roof has clay ridge tiles and a red brick chimney stack with six clay pots rising from the east side. Cast iron half-round guttering on rise-and-fall brackets terminates at a cast iron circular downpipe at the front elevation, while uPVC rainwater goods are used to the rear.

Great James Street was originally laid out around 1833, with the earliest buildings on the street — including Londonderry Third Presbyterian Church — constructed by 1835–37. The laying out of Great James Street, together with the adjoining Queen Street (laid out around 1847) and Clarendon Street (around 1853), was driven by a period of significant economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As historian John Hume noted, during the period 1825–1850 reconstruction within the city walls took place alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore. Great James Street was the first major new street in the area.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 records the Great James Street area as rural hinterland in the townland of Edenballymore, with the city's street development extending no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. North of the walls, only isolated institutional buildings had been erected — the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College — with little domestic architecture. The only building in the Clarendon Street Conservation Area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency-style house constructed around 1815. Robert Simpson, in his Annals of Derry (1847), described the entire district now covered by Great James Street and its surrounding streets as having originally comprised meadow ground without a house.

The development of uniform rows of neat three-storey townhouses established a new affluent area that became the preferred residence of the city's merchant and professional classes. The geometric street pattern followed by Clarendon Street, Great James Street, and Queen Street was characteristic of Georgian urban planning and represented the most ambitious town planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city in 1613–19.

No. 42 was not shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853 but had been completed by 1856, when it was recorded in Griffith's Valuation alongside the adjoining Nos 44–46. At that time the house was leased by Edward Collum, a butter and egg merchant with business premises on Bank Place, to a Christopher Graham. The house was initially valued at £30 and remained occupied by Graham until around 1864. An Annual Revision map of approximately 1873–1910 depicted the building in its current layout, with a two-storey return and an outbuilding to the rear. Ownership passed to a Mary McMonagle in 1881, after which occupants changed frequently. By the 1911 census the building was occupied by Thomas Black, a local grocer. The census building return for that year described it as a second-class building with nine rooms and a stable as its sole outbuilding. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the value was reduced to £29. Ownership passed to a Thomas Johnston in 1947. The dwelling was partially converted into a hairdressing salon in 1959, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the value had risen to £51.

In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated the mid-19th-century streets and terraces as the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, described as an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. No. 42 Great James Street has since been converted into office premises and is no longer used as a dwelling; during the second survey of the building it was occupied by a local solicitor's firm.