12 Clarendon Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7ET

No. 12 Clarendon Street is a mid-terrace Georgian-style townhouse of two bays and three storeys with an attic, built in red brick around 1853 to 1856. It forms part of a row of eleven similar early to mid-Victorian townhouses lining the north side of Clarendon Street, and has group value with Nos. 6–10 and 14–48 Clarendon Street, which were constructed over an eight-year period. The building is located within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, and its well-preserved setting adds to its interest. It stands as a noteworthy example of the type of property built during a period of significant economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The building is rectangular on plan, with a projecting two-storey rear return abutted by two single-storey blocks to the yard, and a two-storey building to the north boundary of the yard. The principal elevation faces south onto Clarendon Street and is set behind a low rendered wall with painted black decorative cast iron railings with trefoil cast iron finials above sandstone coping.

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with angled black clay ridge tiles. There are two roof lights to the south and a single dormer to the rear north. The terrace is stepped at each house, following the contour of the hill, with each house having a red brick rectangular-section chimney to its east. No. 12 has seven buff clay chimney pots to its red brick chimney. Cast iron semi-circular guttering discharges to circular-section downpipes shared with No. 14.

The principal south elevation is laid in Flemish brick bond. The windows are square-headed, comprising two 6/6 timber sliding sash windows to the ground floor right and two 6/6 timber sliding sash windows to the first and second floors; there are no window horns, and the window cills are painted stone. To the left of the elevation is a three-centred arched entrance doorway with a moulded cornice supported by columns of the Doric order on either side of a four-panelled painted timber door, with a radial fanlight above and brass door furniture.

To the east the building is abutted by the adjoining terrace at No. 14, and to the west by No. 10. The rear north elevation consists of a two-storey return to the northwest, abutted at ground floor level by a mono-pitch extension connecting the building with a two-storey pitched roof block at the rear of the yard, adjacent to a rear access route. A single-storey mono-pitch extension to the northeast abuts the three-storey return of No. 10 Clarendon Street. The overall rear elevation is abutted by a number of extensions belonging to both Nos. 12 and 10, forming a small central enclosed courtyard to No. 12. The two-storey pitched roof block at the rear of the site is attached on its east side to a single-storey flat-roofed extension of No. 10.

Despite some loss of original plan form, a proportion of original joinery survives internally.

Materials: natural slate roof; cast iron rainwater goods; brick walling; timber sliding sash windows.

SETTING

The front of the property is bounded by Clarendon Street, set behind a low rendered plinth wall with replacement cast iron railings enclosing a small hard-surfaced area. There is an enclosed yard to the rear with a laneway beyond providing access to the rest of the terrace.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with construction of the first dwellings commencing around 1853. The development of similar terraced housing on Great James Street and Queen Street was driven by a period of economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As the historian John Hume notes, during the period 1825 to 1850 reconstruction of buildings within the city walls took place alongside the first development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore.

The first edition of the Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore records that the Clarendon Street area was originally rural hinterland with few significant structures. By 1830, the city's streets 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 such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum and Foyle College, with little domestic architecture erected during the same period. The only building in the area predating the early Victorian development was Foyle Cottage, a Regency house constructed around 1815, which Calley describes as "a pleasing composition which offers a gentle rebuke to some of the exuberance of later nearby buildings … one of its pleasant features is that it opens a gap in the long terraces."

Writing in 1847, Robert Simpson recorded in his Annals of Derry that "all the district now covered by Great James's Street, William Street, Little James Street … and the numerous lanes in that vicinity [originally comprised] meadow ground without a house." The initial development of housing in this area began in the late Georgian period and continued into the Victorian era, with uniform rows of Georgian-style three-storey townhouses establishing a new affluent district 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 between 1613 and 1619.

A contemporary plan of Londonderry dated 1847 depicted the final layout of Clarendon Street at least a decade before it was completed, and recorded that the street was originally known as Ponsonby Street, named after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. By the 1850s, however, the street had been renamed Clarendon Street in honour of George Villiers, the Fourth Earl of Clarendon (1800–1870), Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1847 and 1852. The second edition of the Ordnance Survey map confirms that the renaming had taken place by at least 1853.

Although the 1847 plan showed Clarendon Street extending from the quay up to Francis Street, only the lower section between Strand Road and Queen Street had been laid out by 1853. Development progressed slowly throughout the 1850s. In 1851, Skipton and Miller had advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street and Patrick Street to be let in perpetuity. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded that only nine dwellings had been constructed along the entire length of the street by that date, and in that same year additional leases were advertised for building ground on the northern side of Clarendon Street.

No. 12 Clarendon Street was among the earliest townhouses to be constructed along the street. Built along with the adjoining Nos. 14–20, it was erected prior to 1856 and first recorded in Griffith's Valuation in that year. This original terrace of five three-storey buildings was leased by the Reverend Henry Wallace, Moderator of the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster in 1839, and No. 12 was individually valued at £25. Following Wallace's death in 1887, Nos. 12–16 continued to be owned by his personal estate until the 1930s.

The 1901 census building return described No. 12 as a first-class building comprising ten inhabited rooms. In keeping with the character of the street, its occupants throughout its history were drawn from the merchant and professional classes; in 1903 the property was occupied by a Mr William McCandless, a local magistrate.

By the time of the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935, the entire row of Nos. 6–26 Clarendon Street had been purchased outright by a Ms Jennie Steen, and the rateable value of No. 12 was increased to £32. Between 1935 and 1956, Nos. 10 and 12 were combined into a single property, valued at £128, and were occupied by the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) during the 1950s. The Derry Housing Association acquired Nos. 10–12 in 1970 and converted the former YWCA hall into a number of residential flats, with a total value of £85 and 10 shillings recorded at the close of the Second General Revaluation covering 1956 to 1972.

In 1978, the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets a Conservation Area, defined as "an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance." No. 12 was subsequently listed in 1979. In 1997, the building was reroofed, new gutters were installed, and the appearance of the building was brought into general line with the adjoining terrace. Around 2000, the current two-storey rear extension was added.

In 2013, Calley described Nos. 6–48 Clarendon Street as a "delightfully long red brick terrace of the mid-19th century … the buildings are nearly all the same, being three-and-a-half-storey, two-bay with most ground floors rather inelegantly squeezing in a doorway with two reduced scale window bays … depressed arched recessed timber-framed doorways have simple segmented fanlights and thin Doric columns supporting entablatures."

At the time of the most recent survey, No. 12 Clarendon Street was in use as offices and was connected to the adjoining No. 10 at first floor and attic levels. Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street remain in residential use; the majority were converted into offices for local dental, legal and accountancy practices in the late 20th century.