16 Clarence Avenue, Londonderry

No. 16 Clarence Avenue is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey red-brick townhouse built in 1900 to designs by Robert Eccles Buchanan, a local architect and civil engineer active in Londonderry between 1887 and the 1920s. It forms part of a row of eleven similar houses of Late Victorian character with a strong Arts and Crafts influence, lining the north side of Clarence Avenue within the Magee Conservation Area. The street itself was laid out in 1897 and named in memory of Prince Albert Victor, the last Duke of Clarence and son of King Edward VII, who died in 1892 at the age of 28.

The house is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return built at half-landing level. The principal elevation faces south onto Clarence Avenue and is laid in Flemish brick bond. To the right of the facade rises a two-storey canted bay window, above which a rectangular gabled bay at second-floor level is cantilevered on large timber brackets with carved timber corbels to either side. The gable features diagonal half-timber panelling with a plain wide painted timber fascia board — details that, along with the leaded and stained glass upper lights throughout, give the building its distinctive Arts and Crafts character.

All openings on the principal elevation are square-headed. The entrance doorway is approached by two steps and features a moulded cornice supported on console brackets set on moulded pilasters to either side. The door itself is a four-panel fielded timber door with a stained glass flat-topped fanlight above. Windows to the principal elevation are timber sliding sashes: the canted bay on the ground and first floors has 1/1 pane sashes with stained glass upper lights, as does the window above the door opening at first-floor level. At second-floor level, the box window has 8/2 pane sashes and the window above the entrance has 4/2 panes. Painted rendered bands mark the ground and first-floor window heads, with a painted sill course to the first and second-floor windows. Cast-iron guttering and circular downpipes serve the front elevation.

The north (rear) elevation is finished in three-storey painted roughcast render. A three-storey rear return to the left is built at half-landing level and has a small red-brick replacement chimney rising from its gable end. A single-storey modern extension with a monopitch roof and smooth painted rendered finish is attached to the rear return. Rear windows consist of 1/1 pane timber sliding sashes to the ground and first floors, 2/2 pane timber sliding sashes at second-floor level and to the first and second floors of the rear return, and top-hung casement windows at ground-floor level of the rear return and the later extension. Within the east face of the return a 6/6 pane sliding sash window is fitted with secondary glazing; to the west face, margin-paned windows at first and second-floor half-landing levels overlook the yard of No. 14. Rainwater goods to the north elevation and the extension are uPVC.

The main roof and rear return are covered in natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles. A large red-brick chimney stack with a dog-toothed corbel rises from the east side, centred on the ridge, and is fitted with clay pots. The east and west sides of the house are abutted by neighbouring properties Nos. 14 and 18 Clarence Avenue respectively.

The house was initially valued at £26 and its first recorded occupant was the Reverend John McAdams, Assistant Secretary for the Diocese of Derry and Raphoe. The 1901 census described the house as a first-class dwelling of ten rooms, owned at that time by a Mr Henry Thompson. The house changed hands with some frequency between 1910 and the 1970s. By the 1930s at the latest, a Mr James A. Thompson was recorded as owner. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland raised the value to £38, and the Second Revaluation (1956–1972) raised it further to £42. In 1985, conservation work was carried out including the reconstruction of the red-brick chimney stack and the installation of cast aluminium rainwater goods. In 1988 the roof was completely reslated. The terrace as a whole was listed in 1979 and incorporated into the Magee Conservation Area in 2006.

No. 16 forms part of a group of eleven similar houses — Nos. 2–14 and 18–22 Clarence Avenue — each retaining its ornate doorcase and canted bay with alternating diagonal and straight half-timbered gables to cantilevered square bays above. The terrace was designed and built in tandem with the development of the Magee College campus, which from the 1880s onwards drove the construction of new red-brick dwellings in the area to house students and college employees. This expansion was itself part of a broader northward growth of Londonderry that had begun in the mid-19th century with Georgian-style terraces on Great James Street, Queen Street, and Clarendon Street, and continued through a period of sustained economic prosperity lasting from the 1860s to the end of the 19th century.

The house is set back from the pavement behind a low red-brick wall with concrete coping, with a small front garden. The rear boundary wall, smooth rendered and painted white, contains two square-headed openings: a black roller shutter to the left and a sheeted timber gate to the right, with overhanging eaves, a painted fascia board, and a uPVC gutter to a flat-roofed enclosure on the reverse side. The yard backs onto a shared alley with the University campus beyond. The Conservation Area design guide described the dwellings along Clarence Avenue as among the city's architecturally finest and grandest townhouses, noting the terrace as very unified architecturally and virtually intact. Buchanan's terrace has been praised as excellently modelled and finely composed, and No. 16 is considered one of the most distinctive buildings within the Magee Conservation Area.