25 Strand Road, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7BJ

25 Strand Road, Londonderry

This is a Victorian mid-terraced commercial building of three storeys and three bays, built in red brick in 1895. It stands on the west side of Strand Road, to the north of the Historic Walled City and on the east side of the River Foyle, within a terrace of generously scaled red brick and rendered commercial buildings of varying type and style, situated outside and between the boundaries of both the Historic City and Clarendon Street Conservation Areas.

The building is rectangular on plan. Its principal elevation faces east onto Strand Road and is constructed in red brick laid in stretcher bond to the upper floors, with painted stucco pilasters featuring v-joints at either end of the façade. The upper floor bays are divided vertically by brick piers, with the central bay wider than the two flanking bays. The architect is unknown, though the architectural historian Calley has suggested — tentatively and ultimately sceptically — that the subtle and charming design may have been the work of the Australian architect Alfred Forman. This attribution is considered unlikely, as the Dictionary of Irish Architects records that Forman did not arrive in Ireland until around 1897, and Calley himself acknowledges that the design of Nos 25–27 Strand Road is perhaps even more delicate than Forman's known work. The building is closely similar in style to the neighbouring No. 27 Strand Road to the north, with which it was constructed simultaneously and almost certainly by the same hand.

The ground floor is occupied by a modern shop-front with bold signage and a tiled surround. It comprises two large glazed display panes to the left of a square-headed timber and glazed door with a plain glazed transom light above, and a large signage board fixed to the fascia within a painted timber surround.

The upper floor windows have segmental arched heads, each with a brick keystone set within brick voussoirs. The first-floor windows are timber sliding sash with eight upper lights and a single-pane lower light, with the exception of the right-hand window, which has a two-light lower pane. The second-floor windows are also timber sliding sash, with decorative glazing bars to the upper lights and single-pane lower lights; it is this unusual glazing bar pattern that contributes particularly to the building's distinctive character.

Above the second-floor windows runs a moulded egg-and-dart frieze below a deep projecting cornice with modillion blocks. Above this sits a low parapet wall carrying a decorative painted ironwork balustrade between rendered piers, with rendered decorative finials on urns at each end over the cornice. Centred on the parapet is a pedimented red brick wall-head dormer containing a segmental arched timber sliding sash window with eight upper lights and two lower lights. The roof behind the parapet is pitched and covered in natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles.

The south side is joined to No. 23 Strand Road. The gable end projects above the roofline of that adjoining property and is finished in unpainted cement render with concrete skews to the gable heads. The north side abuts No. 27 Strand Road. The rear west elevation of the main building is of blank cement-rendered finish to the upper floors, with uPVC guttering on a timber fascia board. A two-storey cement-rendered rear return abuts the west elevation; the return walls are of blank unpainted cement render with a uPVC gutter to the west elevation, a man-made fibre cement roof, and black clay ridge tiles.

The site previously contained an earlier building used as a dwelling and fruiterer's shop by a John Clements, who is recorded in Ulster Town Directories as occupying the site from at least the 1880s and residing in the upper floors. The original building was valued at £14 in the Annual Revisions. It was demolished in 1895 when the present structure was erected. Upon completion, the new building was valued at £65 and was leased by The Honourable The Irish Society to Roulston and Smyth, wholesale grocers. The 1901 and 1911 census records confirm the building was used solely as a shop and stores, unlike its predecessor which had also served as a private dwelling. Roulston and Smyth remained at the address until the 1940s, when the property passed to William and Kathleen Donaldson, who converted it into a pharmaceutical chemist's known as Donaldson and Lee. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value was increased to £90. Donaldson and Lee continued operating from the premises until at least the 1970s, by which time the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) had further increased the total rateable value to £302. The building had fallen vacant by around 2010, though the ground floor was occupied by a retail unit at the time of survey.