33 Clarendon St., Londonderry

33 Clarendon Street is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey with attic, red brick Georgian-style townhouse built in 1862. It forms part of a group constructed in the same year as Nos. 29–31 and 35–51 Clarendon Street, and has group value with Nos. 5–31 and 35–73 (excluding No. 53), a terrace built over a twenty-one year period that lines the south side of the street. The house and its rear mews building are both included in the listing, and the property sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area in the townland of Edenballymore.

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. It faces north onto Clarendon Street, set behind a low rendered wall surmounted by black painted replacement metal railings. The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles and a narrow pitched roof dormer to the front. A large rendered chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge and fitted with seven clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and circular downpipes serve the front elevation.

The principal north elevation is laid in Flemish brick bond with a rendered plinth. The entrance doorway has a three-centred arch opening with a moulded surround to the right, featuring a recessed moulded cornice supported by columns of the Doric order flanking a painted timber four-panelled door, surmounted by an Adam-style fanlight. All window openings are square-headed with painted cement rendered reveals and painted sills. Unless otherwise noted, all windows are six-over-six timber sliding sash. At ground floor there is a single window to the right of the door; at first and second floor there are two windows each, though the upper floor openings are not aligned with those below. The pitched roof dormer is centred on the elevation and contains a six-over-three timber sliding sash window.

The east and west elevations are abutted by the adjoining properties, Nos. 31 and 35 Clarendon Street respectively. The south rear elevation is brick, three storeys with attic. To the left is a three-storey rendered and brick rear return with a door opening onto the rear courtyard; the west face of this return is blank, and the remaining faces were not viewed at the time of survey. This return is further abutted by a pitched roof rendered two-storey return, the west face of which is also blank. That in turn is abutted by a pitched roof rendered single-storey return, again with a blank west face, and its remaining faces were also not viewed at survey. The fenestration to the rear is irregular, with six-over-six timber sliding sash windows to ground and first floors, and a uPVC casement to the second floor. The rear elevation was not fully visible at the time of survey.

To the rear of the site stands a two-storey mews building, rendered with a natural slate roof and clipped eaves. Its north face has three six-over-six timber sliding sash windows to the first floor and is abutted by the single-storey return to the right; the left ground floor section was not visible at survey. The east face is fully abutted by the mews building of No. 31 Clarendon Street, and the west face by the mews building of No. 35. The south face has two blind former window openings to each floor, those to the first floor aligned directly above the ground floor openings.

Materials throughout include natural slate to the roof, cast iron rainwater goods to the north and uPVC to the south, brick walling, and timber windows to the north elevation with uPVC to the south.

The conversion of the property to office use, and its internal linking with No. 31, has led to some modernisation of the interior, though much of the original internal detailing survives.

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with construction of the first dwellings commencing around 1853. The area now occupied by Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets was, as recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore, originally rural hinterland. At that date, the city's street development extended no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street and William Street. The only significant construction north of the city walls in the early 19th century had been isolated institutions such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum and Foyle College, with little domestic architecture in the same period. The sole 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." Robert Simpson, in his Annals of Derry published in 1847, 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."

The development of housing in this area began in the late Georgian period and continued into the Victorian era. The construction of uniform rows of three-storey townhouses established a new affluent district that quickly became the preferred residence of the city's merchant and professional classes. The geometric street pattern of Clarendon Street, Great James Street and Queen Street was characteristic of Georgian urban planning, and represented the most ambitious town planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.

An 1847 plan of Londonderry depicted the proposed layout of what was then called Ponsonby Street — named after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe — at least a decade before the street was completed. By the 1850s the street had been renamed Clarendon Street in honour of George Villiers (1800–1870), the Fourth Earl of Clarendon, who served as 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 to Francis Street, only the lower section between Strand Road and Queen Street had been laid out by 1853.

Development progressed slowly throughout the 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 for building ground on the northern side were advertised. Mullin records that construction did not recommence in earnest until the mid-1850s. Nos. 29–51 Clarendon Street were constructed in 1862 as part of the second phase of the street's development.

No. 33 was built for a Mr. William M. Hunter and was originally valued at £29 in 1862. In 1901 the house was occupied by Allison Lizzie and Kate Wright, who derived their income from interest payments; the census building return for that year described it as a first-class dwelling comprising ten rooms. The property remained with the Hunter family at least until the cancellation of the Annual Revisions in 1931. By 1935 the First Revaluation recorded that the building's value had risen to £34 and ownership had passed to Mr. R. W. and Ms. Anne Cunningham, who continued to own the site into the 1970s.

By 1968 No. 33 was no longer in residential use, having been converted into a private medical surgery for Dr. Thomas McCabe, with its value subsequently increased to £44. 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. 33 was listed in 1979. By the 1980s Nos. 31 and 33 had been combined into a single property for the accountancy firm of Fergus McAteer and Co. The pair underwent renovation in 1988, when the roofs were reslated, the front elevations repointed and the windows repaired. Calley, writing in 2013, described Nos. 29–39 Clarendon Street as "terrace houses with Doric doorway columns." Nos. 31 and 33 continue to be used by Fergus McAteer and Co.

The terrace as a whole represents the mid-19th century expansion of the city of Derry, driven by growth in both population and economic prosperity, and No. 33 is a noteworthy example of the type of property erected during that period of development.