7 De Burgh Terrace, Academy Road, Londonderry

No. 7 De Burgh Terrace is a late-Victorian mid-terraced townhouse built in 1889, situated on the north side of De Burgh Terrace within an elevated row of seventeen uniform houses. The principal elevation faces south onto a long, sloping raised garden. The house is two bays wide and two storeys tall, with a dormer attic, and is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. Its style is Georgian-inspired, characteristic of the professional and merchant-class terraces developed in Londonderry during the second half of the 19th century. Together with its neighbours in De Burgh Terrace, it has group value and is considered among the most important buildings within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area.

The principal south-facing elevation is built in Flemish bond red brick with a painted rendered plinth. At ground floor level there is a canted bay with square-headed painted 2/2 sliding sash windows featuring horizontally divided panes and ogee horns. The entrance doorway has a segmental arched opening with a moulded cornice supported by scrolled console brackets with acanthus leaf detail on pilasters. The door itself is a painted timber four-panelled door with a fanlight above containing a modern stained glass panel. At first floor level the windows are segmental-headed painted 2/2 sliding sash, with coupled windows positioned above the bay and a single light above the doorcase. A continuous projecting sill course runs across the first floor. The second floor dormer, situated above the bay, contains a pair of round-headed painted 1/1 sliding sash windows and is finished with a decorative bargeboard. The main roof has bracketed eaves. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with clay ridge tiles, and a large brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge and fitted with six clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and a circular downpipe are present to the front.

The east and west sides are abutted by the adjoining listed houses, No. 6 and No. 8 De Burgh Terrace respectively. The rear north elevation is rendered and painted white. The two-storey rear return has 2/2 timber sliding sash windows to the first floor and a multi-paned sliding sash window to the ground floor. A large square attic dormer with modern timber casement windows is present to the rear. A modern single-storey flat-roofed extension, finished in smooth white-painted render with white uPVC windows featuring top and side hung opening casements, projects beyond the return at ground floor level; this extension was added in 2005. The pitched slate roof to the main building and the front dormer was reslated in 2006. The boundary wall to the south is red brick, while the east side boundary is rendered with a precast concrete coping and a painted metal gate. The north boundary wall is rendered blockwork with a sheeted timber door painted black, and a small flat-roofed outhouse abuts the inner face of this wall to the west of the door. Access to the rear yard is from a shared lane running the length of the terrace.

Despite the square attic dormer with its modern casement window to the rear, the exterior has retained its character, style, and proportion, and remains a fine example of its period.

De Burgh Terrace is located immediately north-west of the town centre on the western side of the River Foyle, accessed from Academy Road, which runs between Rosemount Avenue to the north-west and Northland Road to the south-east. Brooke Park lies to the south-west of the terrace. The setting is an elevated, picturesque hill site overlooking the Foyle, a location chosen for such terraces because northward expansion of the city had been blocked by the walls of the Lunatic Asylum, pushing new development to the north-west.

A town plan valuation of around 1873 records that De Burgh Terrace was originally laid out in the 1870s, at which point the street was unnamed and had no buildings. The first houses were not constructed until 1889. The terrace was developed as part of the city's continuing northward expansion, following the earlier establishment of Georgian-style terraces along Great James Street, Queen Street, and Clarendon Street in the 1830s to 1860s. New terraces such as Crawford Square and De Burgh Terrace were erected to the north-west on prominent hill sites as residences for Londonderry's professional and merchant classes moving out of the Walled City. The development of large terraces around central gardens or squares has been described as the city's delayed response to Dublin's garden squares, creating a green oasis for wealthy residents close to the city centre.

Nos. 1–17 De Burgh Terrace were developed by Ulick James Daly, a civil servant and gentleman residing at Eccles Street in Dublin. Daly originally submitted plans for eighteen houses in 1888, but only seventeen were ever built. The terrace was constructed in stages between 1889 and 1894, with Nos. 1–8 being the first to be completed, each individually valued at £14. The majority of the completed houses were leased by the Daly family. No. 7's first recorded occupant was a Mr Henry Gallagher. By 1911 the house had passed to Benjamin Phillips, an administrator in the Office of Customs and Excise. The 1911 Census Building Return described the property as a first-class dwelling consisting of eleven rooms. By the 1930s ownership had passed to R. J. Edwards, a local house and land agent. By the time of the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72), the building was valued at £34. Nos. 1–17 De Burgh Terrace were listed in 1979. De Burgh Terrace was not included in the original Clarendon Street Conservation Area designated in 1978, but in 2006 the conservation area was extended primarily in order to incorporate the terrace, designating it an area of special architectural or historic interest the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance.