4 College Terrace, Rock Road, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 7NZ

4 College Terrace is a Victorian mid-terrace two-bay, two-storey-with-attic redbrick townhouse, built in 1889–90 as one of a row of thirteen similar houses lining the eastern side of College Terrace, near the junction of Rock Road and Strand Road on the north side of Londonderry city centre, on the eastern bank of the River Foyle. It is flanked by No. 3 College Terrace to the north and No. 5 College Terrace to the south. Nos. 4 and 5 are slightly larger than the rest of the terrace because they sit at the point where the row bends along the curve of the street.

The house is rectangular on plan. Its principal elevation faces west onto College Terrace, overlooking an urban tree-lined green, and is set directly back from the pavement. The west elevation is laid in Flemish brick bond with Victorian industrial brickwork dressings in contrasting colour. A dentilled brick cornice runs at eaves level with black brick dressings below. Fenestration on the west front consists of a single segmental arch-headed window opening on the ground floor, two segmental arch-headed openings on the first floor, and a single small semicircular arch-headed dormer window with a decorative metal finish at its apex, centred on the elevation. The entrance doorway has a semicircular arch head, is set one step up from the pavement, and contains a painted four-panel timber door flanked by scrolled brackets on moulded timber architraves supporting a slightly projecting cornice, with a plain fanlight above. All openings have red and black brick voussoirs. Continuous decorative brick stringcourses in contrasting colour run at ground-floor level, first-floor level, and below the dormer window. Ground- and first-floor windows are four-over-two-pane timber sliding sashes, with a matching small four-over-two sliding sash to the dormer above. All sills have a painted finish.

The roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the rear return. A large flat-roof dormer with a casement window has been added to the rear slope. A large two-stage redbrick chimney stack rises from the north side, centred on the ridge, and is topped with clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and circular downpipes serve the front elevation.

The rear (east) elevation is of rendered and painted finish. A two-storey rear return steps down to a single-storey extension with a slated lean-to roof. The east elevation has three uPVC casement windows: one on the ground floor, one on the first floor, and one at the attic half-landing level. The north elevation of the two-storey return has a wide uPVC casement window with an integral back door on the ground floor and two uPVC casement windows on the first floor. The gable of the two-storey return is blank and is abutted by the single-storey extension, which has a timber panelled door to the right-hand side of its north elevation; the left-hand side of the return opens to the yard.

The terrace as a whole was originally built by the Trustees of Magee College to provide accommodation for its employees. College Terrace was laid out in 1889–90 following the development of the Magee College campus from the 1880s, a period of economic growth and expansion in the city that had begun in the mid-19th century. The northern expansion of Londonderry had started with the construction of Georgian-style terraces on Great James Street, Queen Street, and Clarendon Street. Magee University had opened in 1865 as a seminary for young men wishing to enter the Presbyterian Ministry, and was renamed the Presbyterian Theological College when it became a constituent college of the Royal University of Ireland in 1879. Between 1881 and 1911 a spate of building activity followed, including three red brick professors' houses constructed by the university to designs by Young & Mackenzie, W. A. Barker, and Robinson & Davidson, as well as the three-storey redbrick houses of Clarence Avenue, all intended to provide accommodation for students and staff. The Rock Road itself had first appeared on maps as early as 1689 but was not named until 1865, reportedly taking its name from The Rock, a house and hamlet of smaller buildings located off the Strand Road. One of the earliest photographs of Derry, taken in around 1872, shows this hamlet as a small number of two-storey buildings on the current site of Rock Terrace, close to the banks of the Foyle, with Magee College standing alone on the overlooking hill.

The first recorded occupant of No. 4 was a Mr Thomas Campbell. The Annual Revisions set the total rateable value of the house at £10. By 1911 the house had passed to John Burns, a local laundry proprietor, and in that year the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of six rooms. By the 1930s a Mr Joseph Williamson — possibly the Joseph Williamson recorded as a coach maker in 1918 — had taken possession, and his family remained there until at least the 1970s. The rateable value was raised to £20 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) and further increased to £29 by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72). Although the terrace was originally intended for college staff and students, within a decade of its construction the majority of houses had passed to occupants unconnected with the campus. Nos. 1–13 College Terrace were listed in 1980. Following Magee's incorporation into the University of Ulster in 1969, most houses along the terrace were converted from privately occupied dwellings to multiple-occupancy student accommodation, a change attributed in the Magee Conservation Area Design Guide to the negative impact of Strand Road bars and nightclubs on residential life. The flat-roof dormer to the rear of No. 4 was added in around 1982, the interior underwent extensive repair work in the mid-1990s, and the house had been converted to multiple occupancy by around 2000.

College Terrace was incorporated into the Magee Conservation Area in 2006, where it is identified as a zone of distinct character along with the Rock Road and part of Northland Road. The gentle curve of the terrace represents a departure from the earlier rectangular layouts of Crawford Square and De Burgh Terrace. The Magee Conservation Area Design Guide notes that the overall composition of the terrace, with its stepped eaves, attic dormers, and chimneys combined with high architectural quality, adds greatly to the quality and variety of the wider conservation area. Writer D. Calley has described College Terrace as competing with Palace Street for the accolade of most charming street in the city, observing that the north side, which contains no buildings and borders the Magee campus, is lined by a low schist wall topped with plain iron rails behind which stand mature trees, giving the small space the feeling of an oasis. The terrace overlooks this low schist wall on the western side of the street, which forms the boundary with the University of Ulster at Magee College. A rear alleyway runs the full length of the terrace, providing access to the rear yards.