4 Queen St., Londonderry

4 Queen Street, Londonderry

This is a Victorian mid-terrace townhouse of three storeys with an attic, built in 1847 on the west side of Queen Street, which runs between Great James Street and Clarendon Street on the west side of the River Foyle. It forms part of a terrace of eight similar houses (Nos 1–8 Queen Street), and shares group value with them. The building sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, to whose historic character it makes a significant contribution.

Architecture and Exterior

The house is rectangular on plan, with its principal elevation facing east onto the street. It is two bays wide and rendered throughout, with the front elevation finished in smooth painted render. The roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles. A cement-rendered, unpainted chimney stack rises from the south side, fitted with seven octagonal or circular buff clay pots. Cast-iron half-round guttering is carried on iron drive-through brackets to the front elevation.

All window openings on the principal elevation are square-headed, set on painted masonry sills. Notably, the ground-floor bays are not aligned with the window bays on the floors above, with a single window bay positioned to the left of the entrance doorway at ground level. All floor levels have replacement 1/1 timber sliding sash windows. Modern rooflights have been inserted into the pitched slated roof on the front elevation.

The entrance doorway is a particularly fine feature: elliptically arched and slightly recessed, it is flanked by engaged fluted columns of the Doric order. Above the door sits an entablature and a webbed Adam-style fanlight. The door itself is a raised-and-fielded four-panel painted timber door, and opens directly from the pavement onto a tiled threshold.

The rear (west) elevation is three storeys, finished in smooth cement render that is unpainted. Window openings here are square-headed on unpainted masonry sills, and the fenestration pattern is irregular, comprising a mix of timber sliding sash and replacement timber casement windows. An original cast-iron conservation rooflight survives on the pitched slate roof to the rear. Rainwater goods to the rear are uPVC. There are no rear extensions.

Setting

The house fronts directly onto the pavement as part of the continuous terrace of eight houses lining the west side of Queen Street. To the rear is a small yard enclosed by a rendered wall. The adjoining properties to the north and south are Nos 3 and 5 Queen Street. The building sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area.

Historical Context

Queen Street was originally laid out around 1840, with the first 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 remarkable period of economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As the historian John Hume has observed, the period 1825–1850 saw the reconstruction of buildings within the city walls alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore.

The First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 records that the Queen Street area — within the townland of Edenballymore — was at that time rural hinterland with few significant structures. By 1830, the city's streets had 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 buildings: the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College. The only building in the immediate area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house built around 1815. Robert Simpson, in his Annals of Derry (1847), recorded that the district now covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street and neighbouring lanes had originally comprised meadow ground without a house.

Great James Street had been the first major new street in the area, laid out around 1833; Queen Street followed as the second. The development of uniform rows of three-storey townhouses quickly established a new affluent quarter that 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 town planning, and represented the most ambitious planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city in 1613–19.

O'Hagan's contemporary plan of Londonderry (1847) recorded the street originally as Queen's Street and noted at least twelve houses constructed along it by that date. The map confirms that Nos 1–8 Queen Street are among the earliest terraced dwellings within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. No. 4 Queen Street appears on O'Hagan's 1847 plan, which also shows a rear outbuilding that has since been demolished. The layout of Nos 1–8 had not changed by the Second Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, and no further buildings had been added in the intervening period.

Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded that Nos 1–8 Queen Street were leased to tenants by Thomas Major, a landowner resident in Creggan. No. 4 was valued at £17 and occupied by a Mr William Forsyth, a grocer with business premises on Shipquay Street, as recorded in Ulster Town Directories. Despite Thomas Major's death in 1858, Nos 2–8 Queen Street continued to be administered by his estate until the 1930s. By 1908, No. 4 was occupied by John Galbraith, a local emigration agent. The 1911 Census classified the building as a second-class dwelling containing seven rooms. By the First General Revaluation of 1935, ownership had passed to a Ms Clara Craig, and the valuation had risen to £22. The Craig estate retained ownership by the time of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), which slightly reduced the value to £21.

In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated the mid-19th century streets and terraces of Clarendon Street, Queen Street and Great James 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 1–8 Queen Street were subsequently listed in 1980. Northern Ireland Environment Agency records note that the chimney of No. 4 was rebuilt and the roof reslated in 1985.

Writing in 2013, Calley described Nos 1–8 Queen Street as the earliest buildings along Queen Street, characterising them as smooth-rendered, three-storey, two-bay houses with deep-set square-headed window bays and round-headed doorways, second-storey bays of diminished scale, timber-framed doorways with Doric columns supporting dentilled entablatures and simple spider-web fanlights, and notably large, deep chimneys. He observed that, although their finishes had been altered over the years, most retained their glazing bars.

Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Queen Street remain in residential use today. The majority were converted into offices for local dental, legal and accountancy practices in the late 20th century. At the time of the second survey, No. 4 Queen Street was in use as office space for a local solicitor's firm.