49 Clarendon St., Londonderry

49 Clarendon Street is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey with attic, red brick Georgian-style townhouse built in 1862. It forms part of a group of twelve mid-Victorian townhouses lining the south side of Clarendon Street, constructed as part of the second phase of the street's development. The house shares group value with Nos. 5–47 and 51–73 Clarendon Street (excluding No. 53), a collection of similar properties built over a twenty-one year period. It lies within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, and its well-preserved setting adds to its significance. The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return.

The principal elevation faces north onto Clarendon Street and is set behind a low cement-rendered wall with concrete coping and painted wrought-iron railings above. The façade is laid in Flemish brick bond on a painted rendered plinth base. All window openings are square-headed, set within painted concrete reveals with painted sills, and fitted with 6/6 timber sliding sash windows — two windows at each of the ground, first, and second floor levels. The entrance doorway has an elliptical arched opening with a moulded cornice supported by scrolled corbel brackets on moulded pilasters, a painted double-panelled timber door, and a plain fanlight above. The dormer to the front carries a coupled 1/1 timber sliding sash window.

The roof is a pitched slated construction with black clay ridge tiles to the main roof, rear return, and both dormers. A single dormer faces both the front and rear. A large brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge and topped with seven circular clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and a circular downpipe serve the front elevation.

The east and west sides abut the adjoining Nos. 47 and 51 Clarendon Street respectively. The south elevation is three storeys, laid in Flemish brick bond, with a three-storey unpainted cement-rendered rear return built at half-landing height. Two modern Velux rooflights are fitted to the east side of the rear return's pitched slated roof. At ground floor level, the rear of the site has been infilled with a single-storey flat-roof extension, constructed during a conversion to office use in 2002–2004. The fenestration to the rear is regular: 6/6 sliding sash windows to the first and second floors, and a 1/1 sliding sash to the dormer window.

Materials throughout are natural slate to the roof, cast iron for the rainwater goods, Flemish bond brickwork to the walls, and timber sliding sash windows.

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period as part of an ambitious programme of town planning outside Londonderry's historic walled city — the most significant such undertaking since the walled city itself was constructed between 1613 and 1619. The surrounding area had been entirely rural hinterland as late as 1830, when the first edition Ordnance Survey map for the townland of Edenballymore recorded few significant structures, and the city's built edge extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. The only major buildings constructed north of the walls in the early 19th century had been isolated institutions: the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College. The sole surviving building in the area predating the Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house of around 1815. As Robert Simpson recorded in his Annals of Derry (1847), the district later covered by Great James's Street, William Street, and the surrounding lanes had originally comprised meadow ground without a single house.

Growth in the economy and population of the city during the mid-19th century prompted the laying out of Clarendon Street alongside Great James Street and Queen Street, following the geometric street pattern characteristic of Georgian urban development. The street appeared on a plan of Londonderry as early as 1847 — at least a decade before its completion — under the name Ponsonby Street, honouring 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), the Fourth Earl of Clarendon and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1847 and 1852. The second edition Ordnance Survey map confirms the new name was in use by at least 1853.

Construction of the first dwellings on the street began around 1853, though progress was slow throughout the 1850s. Griffith's Valuation recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street by 1856. Nos. 29–51 Clarendon Street were built in 1862 as part of this second phase of development. No. 49, along with the adjoining Nos. 41–51, was constructed for James Corscaden, a grain merchant with business premises on Shipquay Place, and was originally valued at £28. Throughout its history the street was favoured by the city's merchant and professional classes. By 1901 No. 49 was occupied by David Roberts, a commercial traveller, and the census building return of that year described it as a first-class dwelling of ten rooms. Corscaden retained ownership of Nos. 45–51 until 1913, when Dr. David J. Browne, chief medical officer at Londonderry's workhouse, purchased the row.

By the First Revaluation of 1935 the property had risen in value to £39. During the Second Revaluation period (1956–72), No. 49 and the adjoining No. 51 were combined into a single property used by the Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority as a nurses' home and training school. In 1964 this was converted to a boarding house, valued at £108 by the close of the Second Revaluation. Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets were designated a Conservation Area by the Department of the Environment in 1978 as an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. No. 49 was subsequently listed in 1979.

Extensive renovation work carried out in 1984–85 included the reconstruction of one chimney stack, the reslating of the roof in natural slate, and the overhaul of the sliding sash glazing. Between 2002 and 2004 the property was converted from residential use to offices, at which time the front railings were installed, the brickwork to the principal façade was repointed, and the two-storey rear extension was constructed. The building was separated from No. 51 during or after this conversion. At the time of the most recent survey the property was in use as a medical practice.