13 Aberfoyle Terrace, Strand Road, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 6SE

No. 13 Aberfoyle Terrace is a late-Victorian mid-terrace townhouse of two storeys with an attic level, built in 1892 to designs by the local architect and engineer William A. Barker (1851–1898). It forms part of a continuous row of seventeen similar houses lining the west side of Strand Road, overlooking the River Foyle, close to the University of Ulster. The terrace was constructed in stages over two decades, from 1891 to 1911, on land belonging to John McFarland, a local magistrate and engineer who lived at Aberfoyle House on the hill immediately above the Strand Road. The terrace was originally known as Templemore Terrace but was renamed Aberfoyle around 1903, taking its name from that house.

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. It is constructed in red brick in Flemish bond, with polychromatic yellow brick dressings throughout. The principal elevation faces east onto Strand Road, set behind a rendered red-brick plinth wall with a painted capping and modern metal railing. The pitched roof is finished in natural slate with terracotta clay ridge tiles to the main roof, dormer, and rear return. A large two-stage polychromatic brick chimney stack rises from the north side, centred on the ridge and fitted with circular clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and a circular downpipe serve the front elevation.

The east-facing principal elevation is two bays wide. At ground-floor level on the right-hand side there is a canted single-storey bay with a hipped roof and segmental arch-headed window openings. A continuous painted sill course runs across the full width of the elevation at first-floor level. The first-floor windows also have segmental arch-headed openings. Above, a wall-headed gable dormer window with a round-headed opening and a painted apex fascia board lights the attic. All windows — to the canted bay, the first floor, and the dormer — are two-over-two timber sliding sash. A projecting brick cornice runs at eaves level. The entrance doorway has a segmental arch-headed opening, with three steps rising from the pavement, a painted six-panelled door, and a plain fanlight above.

To the north and south, the building is abutted by the adjoining Nos. 11 and 15 Aberfoyle Terrace. The rear west elevation rises to three storeys and is finished in cement render with a painted surface; it incorporates a rooflight on the rear slope. A two-storey cement-rendered rear return, built at half-landing height, abuts this elevation. A timber sliding sash window sits at second-floor level on the rear. The rear yard was not accessible at the time of survey.

Barker designed a standard house type for the terrace, but died in 1898 before it was complete — only half of the seventeen houses had been built by that point. He was also responsible for Florence Terrace on the Northland Road, a professor's house within the Magee Campus, and was associated with the layout of Foyle College grounds for building purposes. The development of Aberfoyle Terrace was part of the broader northward expansion of Londonderry, which had begun in the mid-19th century with Georgian-style terraces on Great James Street, Queen Street, and Clarendon Street, and continued through Crawford Square, De Burgh Terrace, and eventually to the red brick terraces of Clarence Avenue, College Terrace, and Aberfoyle Terrace, built in association with the growth of Magee University after it was incorporated into the Royal University of Ireland in 1879.

Annual Revisions records note that the first occupant of No. 13 was a Mr David Blair, and that the house was originally valued at £15. By 1911 it had passed to a Ms Elizabeth Malseed. The 1911 census building return classified it as a second-class dwelling containing eight rooms. The McFarland estate retained ownership of the terrace until at least the 1970s, and throughout that period the building remained in use as a private dwelling. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the rateable value was raised to £24, and by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) it had risen further to £27.

In 1995 the building underwent an extensive renovation that included the repointing of its brickwork, the reslating of its roof in natural slate, the repointing of its red brick chimney stack, and the installation of three new sliding sash windows. Nos. 3–35 Aberfoyle Terrace were listed in 1979 and incorporated into the Magee Conservation Area in 2006. The terrace as a whole carries group value, and its late-Victorian and Edwardian detailing and form enhance the character of the Conservation Area. The Conservation Area Design Guide identified Aberfoyle Terrace as one of five zones of distinct character within the Magee Conservation Area, while noting that the terrace is quite disconnected from the rest of the Conservation Area and appears isolated on the Strand Road, its setting having changed considerably since the houses were built as family homes, now overlooking heavy flows of fast-moving traffic on the four-lane Strand Road.