4 De Burgh Terrace, Academy Road, Londonderry

4 De Burgh Terrace, Academy Road, Londonderry

This is a late-Victorian mid-terraced townhouse built around 1889, designed in a Georgian style and forming part of a uniform row of seventeen similar houses on the north side of De Burgh Terrace. It is widely considered the most complete surviving example in the terrace, having retained both its exterior character and almost all of its original interior features and plan form. Together with the adjoining listed buildings in De Burgh Terrace, it carries significant group value and is among the most important buildings within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area.

Architectural Description

The house is two-bay, two-storey with a dormer attic, rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. The principal elevation faces south onto a long, sloping raised garden.

The front elevation is built in Flemish bond red brick with a painted rendered plinth. At ground floor, a canted bay contains square-headed painted 2-over-2 sliding sash windows with horizontally divided panes and ogee horns. The entrance doorway sits within a segmental arched opening and is framed by a moulded cornice supported on scrolled console brackets with acanthus leaf detail on pilasters. The door itself is a painted four-panel timber door with a plain fanlight above. At first floor, the windows are segmental-headed painted 2-over-2 sliding sash, with coupled windows positioned above the bay and a single light above the doorcase. A continuous concrete sill course runs across the first floor. Above, a wall-head dormer contains a pair of round-headed painted 1-over-1 sliding sash windows. The dormer features decorative bargeboards, and the main roof has bracketed eaves. Cast-iron guttering and a circular downpipe serve the front elevation.

The roof is a pitched slate construction with terracotta ridge tiles to both the main roof and the front dormer. A large brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge and fitted with six clay pots. There is also a small attic dormer to the east side.

The rear (north) elevation is painted render with a two-storey gabled rear return. Rear windows are 2-over-2 timber sliding sash at ground and first floor, with 1-over-1 timber sliding sash windows to the second floor and rear return.

The east and west sides abut the adjoining properties, No. 3 De Burgh Terrace and No. 5 De Burgh Terrace respectively.

The boundary wall to the south is red brick, rendered, with a stone coping, a hit-and-miss timber fence, and a timber gate.

Setting and Rear

Access to the rear yard is from a shared lane running the full length of the terrace. The northern boundary is defined partly by a blockwork wall containing a panelled timber door, and for the remainder by a rubble schist stone wall forming the end wall of a mono-pitched outhouse. Both the local schist stone boundary walling and the surviving outhouse further enrich the quality of the setting. The house is located immediately north-west of the town centre, on the western side of the River Foyle. De Burgh Terrace is accessed from Academy Road, which runs between Rosemount Avenue to the north-west and Northland Road to the south-east. Brooke Park lies to the south-west.

Historical Background

A valuation town plan of around 1873 records that De Burgh Terrace was originally laid out in the 1870s, though at that time the street was unnamed and contained no buildings. The first houses were not constructed until 1889.

The terrace was part of the northward expansion of Londonderry that followed the establishment of Georgian-style terraces along Great James Street, Queen Street and Clarendon Street during the 1830s to 1860s. This expansion was constrained by the walls of the Lunatic Asylum, which pushed new development to the north-west onto picturesque hill sites overlooking the River Foyle. Crawford Square was laid out in the 1860s to 1870s, and Nos 1 to 17 De Burgh Terrace followed as a uniform row of two-and-a-half-storey, two-bay late-Victorian houses developed by Ulick James Daly, a civil servant and gentleman who resided at Eccles Street in Dublin. Daly originally submitted plans in 1888 for eighteen houses, but only seventeen were ever built. The terrace was constructed in stages between 1889 and 1894, with Nos 1 to 8 being the first completed. Annual Revisions confirm that Nos 1 to 8 were built in 1889 and individually valued at £14. The majority of the completed houses were subsequently leased by the Daly family.

The houses were designed as residences for the city's professional and merchant classes. The first known occupant of No. 4 was a Mr Henry Coyle. By 1911 the house was occupied by Frank J. Freer, a secondary school teacher, whose Census Building Return described the property as a first-class dwelling of eleven rooms. The Freer family had vacated by the 1930s, when a Ms Margaret Alice Magee took up residence, remaining there until her death in 1959. In 1961 the house passed to John Collins, who remained there until at least the 1970s. By the time of the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (covering 1956 to 1972), the building was valued at £30, with the Daly family still retaining ownership.

Nos 1 to 17 De Burgh Terrace were listed in 1979. De Burgh Terrace had not been included within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area when it was first designated in 1978, but an extension in 2006 incorporated the terrace, designating it an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. Writing in 2013, architectural historian D. Calley described De Burgh Terrace as "quite simply delightful," noting in particular the long sloping raised front gardens, which are generally very well maintained and contain some fine trees.