13 De Burgh Terrace, Academy Road, Londonderry

13 De Burgh Terrace is a late-Victorian mid-terraced townhouse built around 1889, situated on the north side of De Burgh Terrace, Academy Road, Londonderry. It forms part of an elevated row of seventeen uniform houses fronting onto long sloping raised gardens. Together with the adjoining listed buildings in De Burgh Terrace, it has group value and is considered among the most important buildings within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area.

The house is two-bay, two-storey with a dormer attic, built in red brick in a Georgian style. It is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. The principal elevation faces south onto the long sloping raised garden.

The roof is a slated pitched roof with a large dormer to the front, clay ridge tiles, and bracketed eaves to the main roof. A large brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge and topped with six clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and a circular downpipe serve the front elevation.

The principal south elevation is laid in Flemish brick bond with a painted rendered plinth. At ground floor level there is a canted bay fitted with square-headed painted 2/2 sliding sash windows with horizontally divided panes and ogee horns. The entrance doorway sits within a segmental arched opening with a moulded cornice supported by scrolled console brackets with acanthus leaf detail on pilasters; the door itself is a painted timber four-panelled door with a plain fanlight above. At first floor level the windows are segmental-headed painted 2/2 sliding sash windows, with coupled windows above the bay and a single light above the doorcase. A continuous projecting sill course runs across the first floor. The front dormer at second floor level contains a pair of round-headed painted 1/1 sliding sash windows, and features a decorative bargeboard, though detail is missing from the timber panelling at the apex of the gable.

The north elevation is rendered and includes a two-storey rear return with 2/2 timber sliding sash windows. On the east side there is a large square attic dormer with a modern timber casement window. The north boundary of the property is defined by a concrete blockwork wall with a large opening accommodating a galvanised metal roller shutter, which gives access to a modern outhouse with profiled metal roofing spanning the full width of the rear yard. Rear yard access is from a shared lane running the length of the terrace.

The east and west elevations abut the adjoining properties, No. 12 and No. 14 De Burgh Terrace respectively.

The boundary wall to the south is of red brick with a concrete coping and a painted modern metal gate. The original red brick walling and steps from the street frontage further enrich the quality of the setting.

Materials throughout are as follows: natural slate roofing; cast-iron rainwater goods; red brick in Flemish bond to the south elevation and render to the north; timber sliding sash windows.

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 of the terrace.

The terrace has its origins in the northward expansion of Londonderry that followed the establishment of Georgian-style terraces along Great James Street, Queen Street and Clarendon Street during the 1830s to 1860s. Further expansion was blocked by the walls of the Lunatic Asylum, which pushed new development to the north-west onto picturesque hill sites overlooking the River Foyle. Crawford Square was laid out in the 1860s to 1870s, and De Burgh Terrace followed as part of the same pattern of residential development for the city's professional and merchant classes. Scholar D. Calley has described such terraces arranged around a central garden or square as the city's delayed response to Dublin's garden squares, creating a green oasis for wealthy residents close to the city centre.

The circa 1873 valuation town plan of Londonderry records that the street was unnamed and possessed no buildings at that time. Nos 1 to 17 De Burgh Terrace were developed by Ulick James Daly, a civil servant and gentleman who resided at Eccles Street in Dublin. Daly originally submitted plans in 1888 for eighteen houses but only seventeen were ever built. Construction proceeded in stages between 1889 and 1894, with Nos 1 to 8 being the first completed. The majority of the houses were leased by the Daly family following completion. Annual Revisions record that Nos 13 and 14 were constructed in 1893 and were each valued at £14.

The first recorded occupant of No. 13 was David Bayne, a National School Teacher. By 1911 the house had passed to William John McCullagh, a local grocer. The 1911 Census Building Return described it as a first-class dwelling consisting of eleven rooms. The Daly family continued to own No. 13 until at least the end of the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland, which ran from 1956 to 1972, by which time the value of the house had risen to £30.

Nos 1 to 17 De Burgh Terrace were listed in 1979. De Burgh Terrace was not included within 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 has since been designated an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance.

In 1988 No. 13 underwent a renovation that included the re-slating of the roof in natural slate, the repointing of the exterior brickwork, and the replacement of the original entrance door. Despite the square-headed dormer to the rear, the exterior has otherwise retained its character, style and proportion, making it a fine example of its period. Calley, writing in 2013, described De Burgh Terrace as "quite simply delightful," noting in particular the long sloping raised gardens to the front, which are generally very well maintained with some fine trees.