Columba House, 11 Queen Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7EG

Columba House, 11 Queen Street, Londonderry

Columba House is a mid-terrace, three-storey-with-attic, three-bay former townhouse built in red brick around 1847, forming one of a group of four similar buildings at Nos. 9–12 Queen Street. Although Victorian in date, it deliberately adopts the scale and proportions of earlier Georgian terraces, and sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. It was originally built as a street-fronted townhouse and has since been converted to offices. Despite suffering extensive fire damage in 1984 and losing much of its original plan form and some interior detailing, sufficient architectural and historic character survives to merit its listing, including timber sliding sash windows to the front elevation and a good-quality door case to the entrance.

Architectural Description

The building is rectangular on plan, with its principal elevation facing east onto Queen Street. A projecting rear return rises to the same height as the main building, and a later two-storey addition abuts this return. The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. A red brick chimney stack with clay pots rises from the south side. To the front elevation, cast iron half-round guttering on rise-and-fall brackets terminates in a cast iron hopper and circular downpipe; black uPVC rainwater goods are used to the side and rear.

The principal (east) elevation is of red brick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing, set behind a low-level rendered plinth wall. Metal railings and handrails bound a concrete disabled-access ramp to the front. All window openings are square-headed and sit on painted masonry sills, with the ground-floor bays aligned with those on the floors above. The window to the right of the entrance doorway on the ground floor is a 1/1 timber sliding sash. The entrance doorway itself is elliptical arch-headed and slightly recessed, flanked by engaged fluted columns of the Doric order. It has a raised-and-fielded four-panel painted timber door, a dentilled entablature, and a fanlight above. On both the first and second floors, the windows are 1/1 timber sliding sashes. A large slate-clad central dormer with a slate-pitched roof, decorative bargeboard, timber finial, and a replacement 1/1 sliding sash window sits at attic level. The north and south sides of the building are abutted by Nos. 10 and 12 Queen Street respectively.

The rear (west) elevation rises three storeys with attic and is finished in smooth unpainted render, as is the rear return, which has a slated duo-pitched roof. The rear return also has a zinc-clad flat-roofed dormer. Its gable end is abutted by a further two-storey gabled addition, which steps back in plan and extends across the full width of the main building, enclosing the original yard. Window openings to the rear are square-headed on unpainted masonry sills. The fenestration is irregular: replacement timber sliding sashes appear to the rear, including a wall-head dormer and the gable end of the return; top-hung casement windows appear to the north face of the return and the ground floor of the two-storey addition. The two-storey addition also has a glazed timber-framed door with a plain overlight, and a fixed light to the first floor above with a sloped window head that aligns with the roofline.

Setting

The house forms part of a terrace of four similar buildings lining the west side of Queen Street, within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. The front entrance is reached via four concrete steps from pavement level, with a switch-back concrete ramp to the right of the door, bounded by painted metal handrails and decorative replacement metal railings. To the rear, a small yard is enclosed by a rendered wall and contains a replacement single-storey outbuilding, now used as a community youth centre, which is of little architectural interest.

Historical Context

Queen Street was originally laid out around 1840, with buildings constructed along it by at least 1847. Its development, along with that of the adjoining Great James Street and Clarendon Street, was driven by a period of significant economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As the historian John Hume has noted, the period from 1825 to 1850 saw reconstruction within the city walls alongside the first development of housing outside them at Bogside and Edenballymore. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore shows that the Queen Street area was at that time rural hinterland with few significant structures, and that the city's developed 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 institutional buildings — the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College — with almost no domestic architecture in the vicinity. The only building in the area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house built around 1815.

Queen Street was the second major new street to be laid out in this area, following Great James Street, which had been established around 1833. Writing in The Annals of Derry, published in 1847, Robert Simpson recorded that the district then covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street, and the surrounding lanes had originally comprised meadow ground without a single house. With the construction of uniform rows of three-storey townhouses, a new and affluent quarter was established that swiftly became the preferred address of the city's merchant and professional classes. The geometric street pattern followed by Clarendon Street, Great James Street, and Queen Street was characteristic of Georgian town planning, and the development represented the most ambitious exercise in urban planning in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.

O'Hagan's contemporary plan of Londonderry, also dating to 1847, recorded the street under the name Queen's Street and noted that at least twelve houses had been built along it by that date. The map confirms that Nos. 1–8 and Nos. 9–12 Queen Street are among the earliest terraced dwellings within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. No. 11 is depicted on O'Hagan's plan with a rear return and an outbuilding, the latter now demolished and replaced with a modern return. By the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, the layout of Nos. 9–12 had not changed, and no further buildings had been added to the street in the intervening years.

Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded that No. 11 was owned by John W. Johnston — a local property owner who also held much of the land on nearby Clarendon Street — and was leased to a Mr James Corscaden, with an original valuation of £50. The 1911 census building return described No. 11 as a first-class dwelling comprising eleven rooms, occupied at that time by David Craig, a dental surgeon. By the 1930s, ownership had passed to the McCorkell family, who also owned the adjoining No. 12. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935 increased the valuation of No. 11 to £80 and recorded that ownership of Nos. 11 and 12 had subsequently passed to a Mr J. B. Smith. The Second Revaluation of 1956–72 noted that the building included a store to the rear used by the local firm of J. Thompson & Sons.

In 1970, the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society's survey guide noted that Nos. 9–12 Queen Street were considered not as well handled as the similar Nos. 13–16 Queen Street, which were deemed the most impressive Georgian-style terrace in the area. In 1978, the Department of the Environment designated the mid-19th century streets and terraces of Queen Street, Great James Street, and Clarendon Street as a Conservation Area, defined as an area of special architectural or historic interest the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. Nos. 9–12 Queen Street were subsequently listed in 1979.

Writing in 2013, Calley described Nos. 9–12 Queen Street as a setback terrace of four large brick three-and-a-half-storey, three-bay houses with rendered reveals and wide round-headed doorways, noting that Nos. 9–11 have inset Doric doorcases under spiderweb fanlights and that the 1/1 timber sash windows demonstrate a weakness of that window type on such large, plain surfaces. Calley also remarked that the wall-head dormers on Nos. 9–11 look a little out of place on the traditional Georgian facades. Regarding No. 11 specifically, Calley observed that its doorcase has replacement columns that are larger and less ornate than those of its neighbours, and which could only, in his words, kindly be referred to as Tuscan.

Few of the mid-19th century townhouses along Queen Street remain in residential use. The majority were converted to offices for dentists, solicitors, and accountancy firms during the late 20th century. No. 11 was converted to offices for The Columba Community — a Roman Catholic prayer and outreach association founded in 1979 — in 1982, at which point it was renamed Columba House. The building is also used as a rehabilitation centre for those suffering from substance abuse. It suffered fire damage in 1984 and was extensively renovated, along with the adjoining No. 10, in 1993. The current four-storey rear return was added in 2007.