5 Queen Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7EF

5 Queen Street, Londonderry

This is a Victorian mid-terrace three-storey townhouse with 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 sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area and forms part of a terrace of eight similar houses, with which it shares group value. The building is rectangular in plan, with its principal elevation facing east directly onto the pavement.

Exterior

The front (east) elevation is finished in rough-cast render, unpainted, sitting on a rendered and painted plinth. All window openings are square-headed with plain plaster architrave surrounds on painted masonry sills. The arrangement is slightly irregular: the single ground-floor window bay sits to the right of the entrance doorway and is not aligned with the window bays on the floors above. The entrance doorway has an elliptical arch head, is slightly recessed, and is flanked by engaged fluted columns of the Doric order. It features a raised-and-fielded four-panel painted timber door beneath an entablature with a dentilled cornice, and a webbed, Adam-style fanlight above. The door opens directly from the pavement at threshold level. All windows are replacement 1/1 timber sliding sash windows.

The rear (west) elevation is three storeys tall with a smooth cement render finish, unpainted. There is a small single-storey extension to the right side with a corrugated steel monopitch roof. The window openings are square-headed on unpainted masonry sills, and the fenestration pattern is irregular, including 6/6, 6/1, and 1/1 timber sliding sashes. A modern rooflight sits to the rear slope of the pitched slate roof.

The roof is finished in natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles. A large red brick chimney stack with no clay pots rises from the south side; the stack over the main roof has been rebuilt. Cast-iron half-round guttering on iron drive-through brackets serves the front elevation, while uPVC rainwater goods are fitted to the rear. The north and south sides of the building are adjoined to Nos 4 and 6 Queen Street.

Setting

The house sits within a small terrace of eight similar properties lining the west side of Queen Street, each fronting directly onto the pavement. To the rear is a small yard enclosed by a rendered wall. The building contributes to the character of the Clarendon Street Conservation Area through the historic authenticity it retains as part of this uniform terrace.

Historical Background

Queen Street was originally laid out around 1840, with construction along the street underway by at least 1847. Its development, along with the adjoining Great James Street and Clarendon Street, was driven by significant economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As the historian John Hume has noted, the period between 1825 and 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 — in the townland of Edenballymore — was at that time rural hinterland with few significant structures, the city's built edge extending no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. The only major buildings constructed north of the walls in the early 19th century were isolated institutions such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College, with little domestic architecture. The only building in the immediate area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house constructed around 1815.

Writing in his Annals of Derry (1847), Robert Simpson recorded that the district later covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street, and the surrounding lanes had originally been meadow ground without a house. The initial development of housing in the 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 quarter that became the preferred address of the city's merchant and professional classes. The geometric street pattern followed by 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.

Queen Street was originally known as Queen's Street — a name that continued to alternate throughout its history. O'Hagan's contemporary plan of 1847 shows at least 12 houses had been built along the street by that date. Nos 1–8 and 9–12 Queen Street are among the earliest terraced dwellings within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. No. 5 appears on O'Hagan's 1847 plan with a rear outbuilding, which has since been demolished. By the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, the layout of Nos 1–8 had not changed and no further buildings had been added.

Griffith's Valuation of 1856 records that Nos 1–8 Queen Street were leased to tenants by Thomas Major, a landowner residing in Creggan. No. 5 was valued at £17 and was occupied by a Mr William Downen. Following Thomas Major's death in 1858, Nos 2–8 continued to be administered by his estate until the 1930s. The 1911 census described No. 5 as a second-class dwelling with seven main rooms, at that time occupied by two families. By the First General Revaluation of 1935, ownership had passed to a Ms Clara Craig, and the valuation had risen to £21. The Craig estate retained ownership through the Second General Revaluation of 1956–72, when the value remained at £21.

In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated the mid-19th-century streets and terraces as a Conservation Area, described 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. Records held by NIEA note that No. 5 had its roof reslated and its rainwater goods replaced with cast-iron guttering in 1986, and its glazing was replaced with the current sash windows in 1988.

Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Queen Street are now used as private residences. The majority were converted into offices for dentists, solicitors, and accountancy firms in the late 20th century. Writing in 2013, Calley described Nos 1–8 Queen Street as the earliest buildings along the street, characterising them as smooth-rendered three-storey, two-bay properties with deep-set square-headed window bays and round-headed doorways, diminished-scale second-storey bays, and timber-framed doorways with Doric columns supporting dentilled entablatures and simple spider-web fanlights, most retaining their glazing bars and their large, deep chimneys, though with finishes altered over the years.