10 De Burgh Terrace, Academy Road, Londonderry

10 De Burgh Terrace is a late-Victorian mid-terraced house built in 1891 as part of a uniform row of seventeen two-and-a-half-storey, two-bay Georgian-style townhouses on the north side of De Burgh Terrace, Londonderry. Together with its neighbours, it forms one of the most important groups of buildings within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area and shares group value with the adjoining listed buildings in De Burgh Terrace. Despite a flat-roofed rear extension and a square-headed dormer to the rear, the exterior has retained its character, style and proportion, making it a fine example of its period. The plan form is largely intact and some original internal fabric survives.

The house is two bays wide and two storeys tall with a dormer attic, built in red brick on a rectangular plan with a projecting rear return. The principal elevation faces south onto a long, sloping raised garden.

The south-facing front elevation is constructed in Flemish bond red brick with a painted rendered plinth. At ground floor level there is a canted bay window fitted with square-headed painted 2/2 sliding sash windows with horizontally divided panes and ogee horns. The entrance doorway is set within a segmental arched opening with a moulded cornice supported by scrolled console brackets with acanthus leaf detail on pilasters, a painted timber four-panelled door, and a plain fanlight above. At first floor level the windows are segmental-headed painted 2/2 sliding sash, with coupled windows above the bay and a single light above the doorcase. A continuous projecting sill course runs across the first floor. Above the bay, at second floor level, the wall-head dormer contains a pair of round-headed painted 1/1 sliding sash windows and is finished with a decorative bargeboard. The main roof is a pitched slate roof with clay ridge tiles and bracketed eaves, and a large brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge and carrying six clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and a circular downpipe serve the front elevation. The boundary wall to the south is of dry-dash rendered masonry with a precast concrete coping and a painted metal gate.

The north elevation, to the rear, is rough-dash rendered. A large modern flat-headed dormer with a timber casement window has been added, and the two-storey rear return has been modified with a flat roof and has a chimney at its north-west corner. Access to the rear yard is from a shared lane. The northern boundary of the property is defined by a concrete blockwork wall with stained plywood double doors, and a matching plywood fascia below a corrugated metal roof to an outhouse that spans the full width of the yard. The east and west sides of the house abut the adjoining properties, No. 9 De Burgh Terrace and No. 11 De Burgh Terrace respectively.

The roof is covered in natural slate, the rainwater goods are cast iron, the principal walling to the south is red brick in Flemish bond, the rear walling is rendered, and the windows are timber sliding sash throughout.

De Burgh Terrace is located immediately north-west of the town centre on the western side of the River Foyle, accessed from Academy Road, which runs between Rosemount Avenue to the north-west and Northland Road to the south-east. Brooke Park lies to the south-west. The row of seventeen houses has long front gardens and small rear yards, the latter served by a rear alleyway running the full length of the terrace.

In its historical context, the terrace represents a significant episode in the northward expansion of Londonderry during the Victorian period. Following the establishment of Georgian-style terraces along Great James Street, Queen Street and Clarendon Street in the 1830s to 1860s, the city's continued growth was blocked to the north by the walls of the Lunatic Asylum, prompting development on picturesque hill sites to the north-west overlooking the River Foyle. After the laying out of Crawford Square in the 1860s to 1870s, Nos 1–17 De Burgh Terrace were developed by Ulick James Daly, a civil servant and gentleman resident at Eccles Street in Dublin. Daly originally submitted plans for eighteen houses in 1888, but only seventeen were ever built. The terrace was constructed in stages between 1889 and 1894, with Nos 1–8 being the first completed. The majority of the houses were leased by the Daly family following completion. The development was conceived in the tradition of large terraces around a central garden or square, described as the city's delayed response to Dublin's garden squares, creating a green oasis near the city centre for wealthy residents.

No. 10 was constructed in 1891, along with No. 9, and was valued at £15 — £1 higher than Nos 1–8 because it possessed an additional room. The houses on De Burgh Terrace were designed for the city's professional and merchant classes. The first recorded occupant of No. 10 was James Donnell. By 1911 the house had passed to James R. Montgomery, an emigration agent with offices on Foyle Street, and in that year the Census Building Return described No. 10 as a first-class dwelling consisting of eleven rooms. The Daly family continued to own the building until at least the 1930s. By at least 1936 the house had passed to the Reverend John Linnegan, who in 1960 divided it into two separate apartments. By the end of the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (covering 1956 to 1972) the building's assessed value had risen to £38.

Nos 1–17 De Burgh Terrace were listed in 1979. De Burgh Terrace was not included in the Clarendon Street Conservation Area when it was first designated in 1978, but in 2006 the area was extended primarily to incorporate the terrace, which was consequently designated an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. In 1988 No. 10 underwent a renovation that included the reslating of its roof in natural slate and the installation of a new entrance door.