34 Clarendon Street, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 7ET

34 Clarendon Street, Londonderry

This is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey with attic over basement, red brick Georgian-style townhouse built in 1862, located on the north side of Clarendon Street in the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. It was built simultaneously with Nos. 28–32 and No. 36 Clarendon Street as part of the second phase of the street's development, and it shares group value with the wider terrace of Nos. 6–32 and 36–48 Clarendon Street, which were constructed over an eight-year period. The building retains much of its original character and detailing, and its well-preserved setting within the conservation area adds to its significance. It represents the mid-19th century expansion of Derry and is a noteworthy example of the type of property built during a period of economic and population growth in the city.

Architectural Description

The house is rectangular in plan with a projecting return to the rear. The principal elevation faces south, set behind a replacement low red brick plinth wall partly surmounted by a steel railing. The roof is pitched and slated, with black clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the rear return. A slender red brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge and fitted with clay pots. Cast iron half-round guttering on rise-and-fall brackets serves the front and rear elevations, with circular downpipes.

The principal south (front) elevation is laid in Flemish bond brickwork. Window openings are square-headed: the upper floors each have a pair of 6/6 timber sliding sash windows, and the ground floor has a single 8/8 timber sliding sash window to the left of the entrance door. Notably, the upper floor openings are not aligned with those on the ground floor. All window openings have painted cement-rendered reveals with painted sills and metal-framed window boxes.

The entrance doorway is formed by a three-centred arched opening with a moulded architrave and entablature supported by a pair of columns of the Doric order, with an Adam-style fanlight above a painted timber four-panelled door.

The east and west sides abut the adjoining properties at Nos. 32 and 36 Clarendon Street respectively.

The north (rear) elevation is cement rendered and rises three storeys over basement. To the left is an attic dormer, and to the right is a three-storey over basement return, built at half-landing height and stepping down to two storeys. This extends to a two-storey, stone-built, pitched-roof mews building at the north end of the site. The left bay of the rear elevation contains a single 8/4 timber sliding sash window at basement level, a single 8/8 timber sliding sash window at ground floor, and single 6/6 timber sliding sash windows at first and second floor levels, surmounted by a 6/3 timber sliding sash window set within a slated dormer. The rear return is surmounted by a single 6/3 timber sliding sash window, and a door from the rear return opens onto the rear yard.

Setting

No. 34 forms part of a row of eleven similar Georgian-style, early to mid-Victorian townhouses lining the north side of Clarendon Street. The front of the property is bounded by Clarendon Street itself, behind the replacement low red brick plinth wall with steel railing. To the north end of the site stands the two-storey pitched-roof mews building, and a laneway runs along the rear of the mews providing access to the rest of the terrace.

Historical Context

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with construction of the first dwellings commencing around 1853. The development of similar terraced streets — including Great James Street and Queen Street — was driven by a period of significant economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As John Hume notes, during the period 1825–1850 the reconstruction of buildings within the city walls took place alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore records that the Clarendon Street area was originally rural hinterland with few significant structures. At that date, the city's streets extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street and William Street. In the early decades of the 19th century, the only major construction north of the walls had been isolated buildings such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum and Foyle College, with little or no domestic architecture in the same period. The only building in the area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house constructed around 1815, which Calley describes as "a pleasing composition which offers a gentle rebuke to some of the exuberance of later nearby buildings … one of its pleasant features is that it opens a gap in the long terraces." In his Annals of Derry, published in 1847, Robert Simpson recorded that "all the district now covered by Great James's Street, William Street, Little James Street … and the numerous lanes in that vicinity [originally comprised] meadow ground without a house."

Initial housing development in the area began in the late Georgian period and continued into the Victorian era. The construction of uniform rows of neat three-storey townhouses established a new affluent district that swiftly became home to the city's merchant and professional classes. The laying out of Clarendon Street, Great James Street and Queen Street followed a geometric street pattern characteristic of Georgian town planning, representing the most ambitious urban planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.

A contemporary plan of Londonderry from 1847, which depicted the proposed layout of Clarendon Street at least a decade before its completion, 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 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 name had changed to Clarendon Street 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 throughout the 1850s; Mullin records that it did not recommence until the mid-1850s. In 1851, Skipton and Miller had advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street and Patrick Street to be let in perpetuity. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street, and in that year additional leases were advertised for building ground on the north side of the street.

No. 34 was built in 1862, as part of this second phase of development, together with the adjoining Nos. 28–36 Clarendon Street. It was constructed for John Allen, a wine merchant and property owner with business premises on Linenhall Street. The three-storey house was originally valued at £27 and was first occupied by a Mr. Thomas Wiley in 1862. By 1901, the house was occupied by David McGirr, a local publican with premises on Magazine Street; the census of that year described the dwelling as a first-class house consisting of twelve rooms. Ownership passed to a Mr. Wiley in 1908, and representatives of his estate continued to administer the property until at least the 1930s.

In 1969, No. 34 was purchased by Atcheson and Son, who combined it with the adjoining No. 32 into a single property. The Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72) records that Nos. 32–34 Clarendon Street were valued at £227 10s. and comprised a number of residential flats, a dental surgery and office space. In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets a Conservation Area, described as "an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance." No. 34 was subsequently listed in 1979.

Northern Ireland Environment Agency records note that Nos. 32–34 remained connected and were both treated for dry rot in 1999. By the time of the second survey, No. 34 was in use as office space and was no longer physically connected to No. 32.

Writing in 2013, Calley described Nos. 6–48 Clarendon Street as a "delightfully long red brick terrace of the mid-19th century … the buildings are nearly all the same, being three-and-a-half-storey, two-bay with most ground floors rather inelegantly squeezing in a doorway with two reduced scale window bays … depressed arched recessed timber-framed doorways have simple segmented fanlights and thin Doric columns supporting entablatures." Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street now remain in residential use; the majority were converted into offices for local dentists, solicitors and accountancy firms during the late 20th century.