59 Clarendon St., Londonderry

59 Clarendon Street, Londonderry

This is a mid-terraced, three-storey over basement, three-bay former house built in 1872, located on the south side of Clarendon Street near its junction with Princes Street. The architect is unknown. The listing extends to the house itself, its railings, and a bootscraper. It was built as one of a group of four terraced houses together with nos. 55, 57, and 61 Clarendon Street, forming two pairs of houses as part of the outward expansion of the city. Although constructed later than the earlier terraces lower down the street, it reflects their Georgian rhythm and proportion, with a few features — the round-arched windows, plasterwork, and corbelled eaves brackets — that identify it as Victorian rather than Georgian in character.

Exterior

The principal (north) elevation is painted render at ground floor level, rising to Flemish-bond brickwork above on the upper floors. The entrance is reached by four steps up from the pavement. At ground floor level there is a round-arched doorway containing a painted timber four-panelled door with diamond moulding and a plain fanlight above, flanked by 1/1 timber sliding sash windows with bull-nosed cills and a moulded apron panel below each. A shoulder course runs between each window opening, and hood moulds with flying keystones are present. The first-floor windows are square-headed 1/1 timber sliding sashes with a painted masonry cill course. The second-floor windows are segmental-arched 1/1 timber sliding sashes. A small dormer has a round-arched window, and the basement level has square-headed timber top-hung casement windows. Polychromatic brick detailing runs along the eaves, with cast-iron guttering supported on corbel brackets and a cast-iron downpipe to the front elevation.

The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. A large red-brick chimney stack — which has been rebuilt — rises from the east side, centred on the ridge, with nine clay pots.

The east and west sides of the building are abutted by the adjoining nos. 57 and 61 Clarendon Street.

The south (rear) elevation is three storeys, rendered in unpainted render, with a three-storey rendered rear return set at half-landing level. A square-headed door in the east face of this return leads on to an external galvanised steel escape stair. Windows to the main rear elevation (where visible) are 6/6 timber sliding sashes; windows to the return are a mix of casement and timber sliding sash types.

Setting and Boundary

The front of the property is set behind a low painted rendered boundary wall enclosing the basement area, topped by a sandstone coping with ornate cast-iron railings painted black. A bootscraper is also included within the listing.

At the rear, a one-and-a-half storey duo-pitched rubble schist stone outhouse spans the full width of the yard at the rear boundary. It has a slate roof, black clay ridge tile, clipped eaves, and uPVC guttering. The south elevation of this outhouse, which faces a shared alley, is informally arranged with a single square-headed window opening set almost centrally just below eaves level, and a square-headed door opening to the right side containing a sheeted timber door. Red brick patch repair is visible around this door.

Historical Context

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with construction of the first dwellings commencing around 1853. It forms part of a broader pattern of urban expansion that also saw the development of Great James Street and Queen Street, driven by population and economic growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. The city's first Ordnance Survey map of 1830 records the Clarendon Street area — in the townland of Edenballymore — as rural hinterland with few significant structures. At that date, the built extent of the city reached no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. The only major construction north of the walls in the early decades of the 19th century had been isolated institutional buildings: the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College. The only domestic building predating the Victorian development in the area is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house built around 1815.

Writing in 1847, Robert Simpson recorded that the district now covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street and the surrounding lanes had originally been meadow ground without a house. The initial domestic development of this area began in the late Georgian period and continued through the Victorian era, establishing a new affluent quarter that became the preferred address of the city's merchant and professional classes. The geometric street pattern adopted for Clarendon Street, Great James Street, and Queen Street was characteristic of Georgian town planning and represented the most ambitious planning exercise in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.

An 1847 plan of Londonderry — which depicted the proposed layout of Clarendon Street at least a decade before it was completed — shows the street was originally known as Ponsonby Street, named after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. By the 1850s the street 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.

Although the 1847 plan showed Clarendon Street extending from the quay up to Francis Street, only the lower section between the Strand Road and Queen Street had been laid out by 1853. Development progressed slowly through the 1850s. In 1851 Skipton and Miller had advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street, and Patrick Street to let in perpetuity. By 1856, Griffith's Valuation recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street. In that year, further leases for building ground on the northern side of Clarendon Street were advertised.

No. 59, together with nos. 55–61, was built in 1872, almost a decade after the majority of the Georgian-style dwellings on the street had been completed. Nos. 59 and 61 were constructed for a Mr Patrick Murray, and each was valued at £33 in 1872. By 1901 no. 59 was occupied by Robert Cunningham, a local merchant, and was recorded in the census of that year as a first-class dwelling consisting of ten rooms. In 1905 ownership passed from Patrick Murray to Selina Gosselin, who continued to be recorded as owner in valuation sources until the 1970s. The property's rateable value was increased to £35 under the First General Revaluation in 1935 and remained at this level through the Second General Revaluation (covering the period 1956–72). The building continued in use as a private dwelling throughout this period.

In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets a Conservation Area, defined as an area of special architectural or historic interest the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. No. 59 was subsequently listed in 1979. In 1993 the building was converted from a private dwelling into a number of self-contained flats, and in the same year the roof was reslated in natural slate. At the time of the second survey, the building continued in use as residential flats.

Calley (2013) described nos. 55–61 Clarendon Street as rendered late-19th century terrace houses, three bays each, with ground floors rendered and round-headed bays linked by a shoulder course that creates an arcaded feel, noting that the group is treated as a single terrace but arranged in pairs to accommodate the change in street level.

Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street remain in residential use; the majority of the three-storey buildings were converted to offices for dentists, solicitors, and accountancy firms during the late 20th century. No. 59 is notable within this context for its architectural coherence and the survival of its original character. The intact terrace, set among several similar rows of neat townhouses that step down in a strong linear formation towards the River Foyle, makes a special contribution to the Clarendon Street Conservation Area.