27 Aberfoyle Terrace, Strand Road, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7NP

27 Aberfoyle Terrace is a mid-terrace two-storey with attic level red brick townhouse with polychromatic yellow brick dressings, built in 1906 to designs by the local architect and engineer William A. Barker (1851–1898). It sits on the west side of Strand Road, Londonderry, overlooking the River Foyle and close to the University of Ulster (Magee Campus). The house is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return, and forms part of a continuous terrace row of seventeen similar houses lining the west side of Strand Road.

The principal east-facing elevation is laid in Flemish brick bond with yellow brick dressings and a projecting brick cornice at eaves level. At ground floor on the right side there is a canted single-storey bay window, and a continuous painted sill course runs across the full width of the elevation at first floor level. Window openings to the canted bay and the first floor are segmental arch-headed, while the wall-headed gable dormer above has a round-headed opening with a painted apex fascia board. Windows throughout the front elevation are 1/1 timber sliding sash to the canted bay and first floor, with a casement window at dormer level. The entrance doorway has a segmental arch-headed opening, two steps up from the pavement, fitted with a painted five-panel fielded timber door with a plain fanlight above. The building is set behind a low brick wall with replacement painted metal railings.

The natural slated pitched roof is finished with terracotta clay ridge tiles to the main roof, the dormer, and the rear return. A large two-stage polychromatic brick chimney stack rises from the north side, centred on the ridge with six circular clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and a circular downpipe serve the front and rear elevations, while uPVC rainwater goods are used on the rear return.

The rear west elevation is two storeys of unpainted cement render, abutted by a two-storey unpainted cement rendered rear return built at half-landing height, which steps down to a single-storey unpainted rendered extension spanning the length of the rear yard. This extension abuts the rear boundary wall, which has a timber sheeted and braced gate. Fenestration to the rear elevation, rear return, and single-storey extension is irregular, consisting of casement windows on painted masonry sills. The north and south sides are abutted by the adjoining Nos. 25 and 29 Aberfoyle Terrace.

Some historic detailing survives internally, though the record does not describe this in further detail.

The terrace takes its name from Aberfoyle House, which stood directly above on the hill overlooking Strand Road, and was built on land belonging to John McFarland, a local magistrate and engineer who lived there. The terrace was originally known as Templemore Terrace, with the name changed to Aberfoyle in around 1903. William Barker established the standard design for all the houses, but died in 1898 before the terrace was complete. By that point only roughly half of the seventeen houses had been built. The terrace was constructed in stages across three phases between 1891 and 1911 — contrary to an earlier suggestion in the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society (UAHS) guide for Derry that it was built around 1902. No. 27 was completed in 1906 as part of the third phase.

Barker was a significant figure in the development of this part of the city. He was also responsible for Florence Terrace on the Northland Road, a Professor's House within Magee Campus, and was associated with laying out the Foyle College grounds for building. The broader northward expansion of Londonderry that produced Aberfoyle Terrace had begun in the mid-19th century with Georgian-style terraces on Great James Street, Queen Street, and Clarendon Street, followed by Crawford Square and De Burgh Terrace. By the end of the 19th century this expansion had reached Magee University, which had been incorporated into the Royal University of Ireland in 1879, and was accompanied by the erection of new red brick terraces at Clarence Avenue and College Terrace alongside Aberfoyle Terrace.

No. 27 was originally valued at £16 10 shillings. In 1911 it was occupied by Margaret Tubman, a local draper, whose household census return described it as a second-class dwelling of eleven rooms. By the 1930s the Tubman family had vacated, and the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland recorded a series of tenants between 1936 and 1956, at which point the value had risen to £25. From 1956 a Mr Andrew Thompson occupied the house through to the end of the Second General Revaluation period (1956–1972), by which time the value had risen further to £27. The McFarland estate retained ownership throughout this entire period. Nos. 3–35 Aberfoyle Terrace were listed in 1979 and incorporated into the Magee Conservation Area in 2006.

In 1986 the house underwent an extensive renovation that included reslating the roof in natural slate, installing new sliding sash windows, renewing the rainwater goods, and repointing the brickwork to the front elevation.

The 1970 UAHS guide described the terrace as "a pleasing terrace of two-storey houses with half dormers, each house with a ground floor half-hexagonal bay window in yellow brick. The whole terrace is in red brick with brick reveals, and dressings in yellow brick. The end houses (No. 3 and No. 35) are a little higher than the rest." The Magee Conservation Area Design Guide later noted that the terrace appears somewhat isolated on the Strand Road, remarking that "the ambiance surrounding Aberfoyle Terrace has changed out of all recognition from the days when it was home to families and would have looked onto a somewhat different Strand Road. Today the terrace overlooks heavy flows of fast moving traffic on the four lane Strand Road."

Nos. 3–35 Aberfoyle Terrace carry group value as a coherent Late Victorian and Edwardian terrace, and the row as a whole is considered to enhance the character of the Magee Conservation Area. Magee College (University of Ulster) lies immediately to the rear at high level to the west, and the River Foyle lies to the east.