5 De Burgh Terrace, Academy Road, Londonderry

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

The house is two-bay, two-storey with an attic dormer, 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 sloping raised garden.

The roof is a pitched slate construction with clay ridge tiles, a wall-head dormer to the front, bracketed eaves, and a large brick chimney stack rising from the east side, centred on the ridge and fitted with six clay pots. A decorative bargeboard is applied to the dormer. Cast-iron guttering and a circular downpipe serve the front elevation.

The principal south elevation is laid in Flemish bond red brick with a painted rendered plinth. At ground floor level there is a canted bay with a lead roof and 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 design with a plain fanlight above. At first floor level the windows are segmental-headed painted 2/2 sliding sash, with coupled windows above the bay and a single light above the doorcase. A continuous projecting sill course runs across the first floor. The attic dormer, positioned above the bay, contains a pair of round-headed painted 1/1 sliding sash windows. The boundary wall to the south is of rendered red brick with stone coping and a modern metal gate.

The north elevation is rendered and painted, with a two-storey rear return. A small dormer window with a 2/2 timber sliding sash sits to the east side of the rear elevation, visible from the rear alleyway. A modern concrete-block flat-roofed outbuilding with a galvanised metal sheeting door stands to the rear of the property. The east and west sides abut the adjoining No. 4 and No. 6 De Burgh Terrace respectively. Rear yard access is from a shared lane running the full length of the terrace. The rainwater goods to the north are uPVC rather than cast iron.

De Burgh Terrace is located immediately north-west of Londonderry city centre, on the western side of the River Foyle. It is accessed from Academy Road, which runs between Rosemount Avenue to the north-west and Northland Road to the south-east, with Brooke Park lying to the south-west.

The street was originally laid out in the 1870s, as recorded on the town plan of around 1873, though it was unnamed at that time and had no buildings. The first houses were not built until 1889. The terrace was part of the city's northward expansion during the 19th century, during which Georgian-style terraces along Great James Street, Queen Street, and Clarendon Street had been established from the 1830s to the 1860s, catering for Londonderry's professional and merchant classes moving out of the Walled City. Further northward expansion was blocked by the walls of the Lunatic Asylum, and so new terraces — including Crawford Square and De Burgh Terrace — were erected to the north-west on picturesque hill sites overlooking the Foyle. The development of large terraces around a central garden or square has been described as the city's delayed response to Dublin's garden squares, creating a green oasis for wealthy residents near the city centre.

Following the laying out of Crawford Square in the 1860s to 1870s, Nos 1–17 De Burgh Terrace were developed by Ulick James Daly, a civil servant and gentleman residing at Eccles Street in Dublin. Daly originally submitted plans for 18 houses in 1888, but only 17 were ever built. The terrace was constructed in stages between 1889 and 1894, with Nos 1–8 completed first. The Annual Revisions record that these first eight houses were constructed in 1889 and individually valued at £14. The majority of the completed buildings were subsequently leased by the Daly family.

The first occupant of No. 5 was Joseph Lemon, a local draper, whose property was described in the census building return as a first-class dwelling. By the 1930s, ownership of Nos 5 and 6 had passed to R. J. Edwards, a local house and land agent, as recorded in the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57). In 1936 No. 5 was occupied by Albert Watson, whose family continued to reside there until at least the 1970s. By the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) the building was valued at £34.

Nos 1–17 De Burgh Terrace were listed in 1979. The terrace had not been included in the Clarendon Street Conservation Area when it was first designated in 1978, but in 2006 the area was extended primarily to incorporate the terrace. It is consequently designated as an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. Writing in 2013, Calley described De Burgh Terrace as "quite simply delightful", noting in particular that "what makes these particularly fine are the long sloping raised gardens to the front of the houses, which are generally very well maintained with some fine trees."

No. 5 underwent an extensive renovation in 1992–94, which included the reconstruction of the chimney stack, repointing of the brickwork, and an overhaul of the sliding sash windows.