63 Claredon Street

63 Clarendon Street, Londonderry

This is a mid-terraced, three-storey house over a basement, built in 1874 on the south side of Clarendon Street, within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. The architect is unknown. It was built as a pair together with No. 65 next door, and the two properties share group value. The house is rendered throughout, with decorative stucco detailing, and sits within a terrace of ten properties lining the south side of the street between Princes Street and Francis Street.

Although constructed slightly later than the majority of the street's houses, No. 63 reflects the rhythm and proportions of the earlier, more Georgian-style terraces towards the lower end of the street. Those earlier buildings are predominantly brick and two-bay in form, whereas Nos. 63 and 65 are rendered, three-bay, and incorporate distinctly Victorian features: a canted bay window, round-arched windows, deep stucco mouldings, and decorative corbels. In 2013, architectural historian Calley described the pair as "rendered late-19th century terrace houses with canted bays running through ground and first floors, with paired bracketed heavy cornice and heavy mouldings."

Exterior — North (Principal) Elevation

The principal elevation faces north, set behind a low rendered plinth wall with railings above. The entrance doorway sits within a slightly recessed round-arched opening, with a moulded stucco architrave forming the arch. The arch is supported by a pair of pilasters, painted to match, topped with a projecting cornice detail carried on acanthus leaf decoration, with a stucco bunch of grapes at the head of the arch. The doors themselves are paired, half-leaf, two-panelled timber, with a plain fanlight above. The entrance is reached by three steps up from pavement level.

A two-storey canted bay window rises from basement to first-floor level, with square-headed openings. Unfortunately, one square-headed casement window has replaced the original window in the front face of the canted bay, and the window openings in the splayed side walls of the bay have been infilled, rendered, and painted. A projecting stucco cornice runs the full width of the elevation, dividing the ground floor from the first floor, with a similar detail at the top of the canted bay.

At first-floor level, the window directly above the entrance door has a square-headed opening with a cornice hood mould supported on decorative console brackets, with moulded architraves. The second floor is composed of three round-arched windows: a single window above the main entrance door and a pair of windows above the canted bay. These round-arched windows are embellished in a manner similar to those on the first floor, and include a projecting string course at sill level. All windows to the principal facade are one-over-one timber sliding sash with horns.

Stucco quoins to the north-east corner of the elevation mirror the detailing on the adjoining No. 65. Projecting eaves are supported on corbel brackets. The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. A large red-brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge, with six clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and a painted circular downpipe are present to the front.

South, East, and Rear Elevations

The south elevation is three storeys of smooth, unpainted render. To the left there is a lean-to return with a slated roof in Bangor Blue slates. A small flat-roofed dormer window at the rear of the main roof contains a fire exit door opening onto an external steel escape stair within the yard. The fenestration to the south elevation is irregular: glazed fire screens have been inserted in place of former windows, with a small number of sliding sash windows remaining to the main building at half-landing level. The lean-to is abutted by a later two-storey-over-basement pitched-roof return, finished in wet-dash render with artificial roof slates, black clay ridge tiles, and timber casement windows informally arranged. A further external steel fire stair at the southernmost end of this later return descends from ground floor to basement level within the yard. These rear alterations, carried out when the building was converted to use as a homeless shelter, detract somewhat from its character.

The east side is adjoined to No. 61 Clarendon Street, which is lower in height, reflecting the steep slope of the street. Above the roof line of the lower adjacent building, two square-headed casement windows are visible at attic level within the gable. The exposed wall is smooth rendered and unpainted on either side of a red-brick chimney stack centred on the apex.

Materials summary: Natural slate roof to the main building; cast-iron rainwater goods to the north elevation, uPVC to the south; smooth painted render to the north wall; smooth unpainted render with wet-dash to the later rear return; timber sliding sash windows to the north; timber casement windows to the south.

Interior

Despite some loss of original fabric, many fine features survive internally. Internal alterations were carried out in the 1990s as part of the conversion to sheltered accommodation, and these have altered the plan form somewhat.

Historical Background

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with the first dwellings begun around 1853. The surrounding area — the townland of Edenballymore — was recorded as rural hinterland on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830, with the city's built-up streets extending no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street at that date. The only significant earlier building nearby was Foyle Cottage (a Regency house of around 1815), along with isolated institutional buildings such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College. As historian John Hume notes, the period 1825–1850 saw reconstruction within the city walls alongside the first development of housing outside them at Bogside and Edenballymore.

Robert Simpson, writing in The Annals of Derry (1847), recorded that the entire district now covered by Great James's Street, William Street, Little James Street and the surrounding lanes had originally comprised "meadow ground without a house." The development of Clarendon Street, Great James Street, and Queen Street followed a geometric street pattern characteristic of Georgian urban planning — the most ambitious town-planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city in 1613–19.

The street was originally named Ponsonby Street, after the Rt. Rev. Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. By the 1850s it 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 name Clarendon Street was in use by at least 1853.

Development of the street was slow throughout the 1850s. Griffith's Valuation recorded only nine dwellings along its entire length by 1856, though further building ground was advertised for lease on the northern side of the street that year. Although the street as a whole has a strong Georgian character, the earliest buildings were erected in the early Victorian period. By the 1870s, the incorporation of bay windows and decorative corbels into the façades of Nos. 63–65 indicated a tentative shift toward a more contemporary Victorian aesthetic, a tendency also visible at Bayview Terrace nearby.

No. 63 Clarendon Street, along with No. 65, was constructed in 1874 for Alexander McElwee, a local magistrate and timber merchant with premises on the Strand Road. The house was originally valued at £38. The 1901 census — which described it as a first-class dwelling with thirteen rooms — recorded its occupant as William Phillips, a local shipowner and steamboat agent with A. A. Laird & Co. Alexander McElwee continued to own the property until 1910, when it was acquired by the trustees of Carlisle Road Methodist Church as the manse for their minister, the Reverend Thomas Dalton. It was used briefly as a manse before returning to private residential use by 1929.

By 1935 the property had been acquired by Elizabeth and John Colhoun, with the valuation rising to £44. The Colhouns retained ownership through the Second Revaluation period (1956–1972) but changed the use to a boarding house in 1970, by which time the valuation had reached £92. The Clarendon Street Conservation Area was designated by the Department of the Environment in 1978, and No. 63 was listed the following year in 1979. The roof was replaced in natural slate in 1988. Internal alterations in the 1990s accompanied the conversion to sheltered accommodation, a use that also accounts for the alterations at the rear. At the time of the most recent survey, the building was in use as a homeless shelter known as the Clarendon Shelter.

Setting

No. 63 forms an intact pair with No. 65, both sharing a similar design and having been built simultaneously. This pair sits within a terrace of ten properties on the south side of Clarendon Street and contributes to a strong linear formation of neat townhouses that step down toward the River Foyle. Most of the mid-Victorian townhouses on Clarendon Street are no longer in residential use, the majority having been converted to offices for solicitors, dentists, and accountancy firms in the late 20th century. The intact character of Nos. 63 and 65, set among several similar rows of townhouses within the Conservation Area, contributes a quality of special architectural interest to the wider streetscape.