15 De Burgh Terrace, Academy Road, Londonderry

No. 15 De Burgh Terrace is a late-Victorian mid-terraced townhouse built around 1889, designed in a Georgian style using red brick. It forms part of a uniform row of seventeen two-and-a-half-storey, two-bay houses on the north side of De Burgh Terrace, set above long sloping raised front gardens. Together with the adjoining listed buildings in the terrace, it has significant group value and is considered among the most important buildings within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. The local schist walling at the rear and original red brick walling and steps at the street frontage further enrich its setting.

EXTERIOR

The house is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. The principal elevation faces south onto the sloping garden. The roof is a slated pitched construction with a wall-head dormer to the front, clay ridge tiles, a large brick chimney stack rising from the east side centred on the ridge with six clay pots, bracketed eaves, and decorative bargeboard to the dormer. Cast-iron guttering and a circular downpipe serve the front elevation; uPVC guttering and downpipe serve the rear.

The principal south-facing elevation is built in Flemish bond red brick with a painted rendered plinth. At ground floor level there is a canted bay with square-headed painted 2/2 sliding sash windows, the panes horizontally divided and fitted with 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 painted timber doors are two-panel, double-leaf, with a plain fanlight above. At first floor, the windows are segmental-headed painted 2/2 sliding sash, with coupled windows positioned above the bay and a single light above the doorcase. A continuous projecting sill course runs across the first floor. The second-floor dormer, situated above the bay, contains a pair of round-headed painted 1/1 sliding sash windows. A red brick boundary wall with concrete coping, a modern metal gate and railings, and concrete winder steps lead up to the raised front garden.

The east and west sides abut the adjoining properties: No. 14 De Burgh Terrace to the east and No. 16 to the west. The north elevation is rendered and painted, with a two-storey rear return featuring 2/2 timber sliding sash windows and a small wall-head dormer to the attic on the east side, also with a 2/2 timber sliding sash window. A single-storey white uPVC conservatory extends from the north elevation to the edge of the original return; this is a modern addition and detracts somewhat from the building's character.

Access to the rear yard is from a shared lane. The northern boundary is defined by a random schist stone wall with upright stone copings. This wall features an arched opening in the middle, framed by red brick reveals, fitted with a sheeted timber gate painted blue. Part of the wall is incorporated into a single-storey red brick monopitched outhouse with a boxed timber fascia and verge, a slate roof, and uPVC guttering.

SETTING

De Burgh Terrace lies immediately north-west of the city centre on the western side of the River Foyle, accessed from Academy Road, which runs between Rosemount Avenue to the north-west and Northland Road to the south-east. Brooke Park is located to the south-west of the terrace. The row of seventeen houses has long front gardens and small rear yards, the latter reached via a rear alleyway running the full length of the terrace.

HISTORY

A town plan produced for the valuation survey of around 1873 shows that De Burgh Terrace was originally laid out in the 1870s, though at that time the street had no name and no buildings. The first houses were not constructed until 1889. De Burgh Terrace belongs to a broader phase of northward expansion in Londonderry, following the earlier establishment of Georgian-style terraces along Great James Street, Queen Street, and Clarendon Street in the 1830s to 1860s. This expansion was designed to house the city's professional and merchant classes as they spread outward from the Walled City. Further northward growth was constrained by the walls of the Lunatic Asylum, so new terraces including Crawford Square and De Burgh Terrace were erected to the north-west on picturesque hill sites overlooking the River Foyle. As one commentator has observed, the development of large terraces around a central garden or square can be understood as the city's delayed response to Dublin's garden squares, creating a green oasis for wealthier residents close to 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 who resided at Eccles Street in Dublin. Daly originally submitted plans for eighteen houses in 1888, but only seventeen were ever built. The terrace was constructed in stages between 1889 and 1894, with Nos 1–8 being the first to be completed. The majority of the houses were leased by the Daly family following completion.

Annual Revisions record that Nos 15–17 De Burgh Terrace were completed in 1894 and were each valued at £15 — £1 more than most adjoining properties, as these three houses contained an additional room. The first recorded occupant of No. 15 was Arthur Ellis, the manager of a local shirt and collar factory. The 1911 Census Building Return described No. 15 as a first-class dwelling of eleven rooms. The Daly family retained ownership of the house until at least the end of the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland, which ran from 1956 to 1972, by which time its assessed value had risen to £30.

Nos 1–17 De Burgh Terrace were listed in 1979. De Burgh Terrace was not 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 has accordingly been designated an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. The terrace has been described as "quite simply delightful," with particular praise for the long sloping raised front gardens, which are generally well maintained and feature some fine trees.

By 1989 the building had its roof reslated and its exterior brickwork repointed.