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

32 Clarendon Street, Londonderry

This is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey Georgian-style townhouse with an attic level over a basement, built in red brick in 1862. It sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area on the north side of the street and retains much of its original character and detailing. The house has group value as part of a coherent row of eleven similar early- to mid-Victorian townhouses — Nos. 6–30 and 34–48 Clarendon Street — built over an eight-year period, and together these form one of the most significant planned streetscapes in the city.

Architectural Description

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting return to the rear. The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the return. A slender cement-rendered chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge, and carries six clay pots and one terracotta pot. Cast iron half-round guttering is fitted on rise-and-fall brackets, with a circular downpipe serving both the front and rear elevations.

The principal south-facing front elevation is laid in Flemish bond brickwork. It is set back behind a low, sloping, rendered and painted plinth wall with capping stones; evidence of former wrought-iron railings survives although the railings themselves are gone. At ground floor level there is a single entrance opening with a three-centred arch, framed by a moulded architrave and entablature supported by a pair of Doric columns, with an Adam-style fanlight above a painted timber four-panelled door. To the right of the door is a single window, and directly below this at basement level is a blocked-up cement-rendered window opening. The first and second floors each carry a pair of windows, though these are not aligned with the ground floor openings. All window openings are square-headed and contain 2/2 timber sliding sashes set within painted cement-rendered reveals with painted sills. The east and west sides of the house are abutted by the adjoining properties, Nos. 30 and 34 Clarendon Street respectively.

The north-facing rear elevation is red brick, three storeys over basement, with an attic dormer to the left and a three-storey-over-basement return to the right, built at half-landing height. The left bay has a single 8/8 timber sliding sash window at ground floor level, single 6/6 timber sliding sash windows to the first and second floors, and a dormer window above (the basement level was not visible at the time of survey). The rear return is surmounted by a single 6/3 timber sliding sash window. A timber-sheeted door from the rear return opens onto the rear yard, which leads to a two-storey stone mews building to the north of the site.

Setting

The property fronts onto Clarendon Street, separated from the pavement by the low rendered plinth wall. To the north end of the site is a two-storey pitched-roof mews building, with a laneway running along its rear providing access to the rest of the terrace.

Historical Context

Clarendon Street was laid out as part of a major expansion of Londonderry that took place during the mid-19th century, driven by significant growth in the city's economy and population. The first edition of the Ordnance Survey map (1830) shows the Clarendon Street area — within the townland of Edenballymore — as essentially rural hinterland. At that time, development north of the city walls extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street and William Street, and the only notable buildings in the wider area were isolated institutional structures such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College. The sole domestic building of note predating the Victorian development was Foyle Cottage, a Regency house of around 1815.

As Robert Simpson recorded in his Annals of Derry (1847), the entire district that would become Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street and their surrounding lanes had previously been open meadow ground. An 1847 plan of the city depicted the proposed layout of what was then called Ponsonby Street — named after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe — extending from the quay up to Francis Street. 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 from 1847 to 1852. The second edition of the Ordnance Survey map confirms the new name was in use by at least 1853.

Construction of the first dwellings on Clarendon Street began around 1853, though progress was slow. In 1851, Skipton and Miller had advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street and Patrick Street to let in perpetuity. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street, and in that year additional leases for building ground on the north side were advertised. No. 32 was built in 1862 as part of this second phase of development, together with the adjoining Nos. 28–30 and 34–36. It was constructed for John Allen, a wine merchant and property owner with business premises on Linenhall Street. The house was originally valued at £27 and its first recorded occupant was a Mr. John Marshall in 1862.

The street quickly became home to the city's merchant and professional classes. By 1901, No. 32 was occupied by William J. Ruttle, a local draper, and the census of that year described his house as a first-class dwelling of ten rooms. Ownership passed to Alexander McCormick in 1871, and the McCormick estate continued to administer the property until the 1930s, when it was purchased by a Ms. Emily McCandless. Between 1935 and 1956, McCandless converted the former dwelling into a medical clinic. In 1969, the building was purchased by Atcheson and Son, who combined it with the adjoining No. 34 into a single building. The Second Revaluation (1956–72) records that Nos. 32–34 Clarendon Street was valued at £227 10s. and comprised a number of residential flats, a dental surgery, and office space.

In 1978, the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets a Conservation Area. No. 32 was listed in 1979. Records held by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency note that by 1981 the building was in use as offices and that all of the original Georgian glazing had been removed. Dry rot treatment was carried out in 1999. The building remained conjoined with No. 34 throughout this period. At the time of the most recent survey, No. 32 was occupied by a firm of solicitors who also occupied the adjoining Nos. 28–30.

Calley, writing in 2013, described Nos. 6–48 Clarendon Street as a "delightfully long red brick terrace of the mid-19th century," noting that "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." The terrace as a whole represents the most ambitious programme of urban planning in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.