2 Queen St., Londonderry

2 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 forms part of a terrace of eight similar houses (Nos 1–8 Queen Street), with which it shares group value, and sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. At the time of the most recent survey the building was vacant, with its ground floor window boarded up, and it had been added to the Built Heritage at Risk Register in 2012.

Exterior

The building is rectangular on plan with its principal elevation facing east onto the street and a two-storey projecting rear return to the west. The roof is pitched natural slate — fibre cement to the rear return — with terracotta clay ridge tiles and a rebuilt red brick chimney stack carrying seven terracotta clay pots rising from the north side. Cast-iron half-round guttering on iron drive-through brackets terminates at a circular downpipe on the front elevation; uPVC rainwater goods serve the rear.

The principal east elevation is finished in smooth painted render. All window openings are square-headed and sit on painted masonry sills. Notably, the window bays on the ground floor do not align with those on the floors above. The single window bay on the ground floor to the left of the entrance doorway has been concealed with a sheet of plywood. The entrance doorway is slightly recessed beneath an elliptical arch and is flanked by engaged fluted columns of the Doric order. It features a raised-and-fielded four-panel painted timber door with entablature and a webbed Adam-style fanlight above; the door opens directly onto the pavement with no step. The first floor is glazed with 6/6 timber sliding sash windows, and the second floor with 6/3 timber sliding sash windows.

The rear west elevation rises three storeys and is built in handmade red brick laid in English Garden Wall bond with cement pointing. The rear return is finished in smooth plain painted render with a fibre cement pitched roof built at half-landing height. Window openings here are square-headed on unpainted masonry sills. The fenestration on the rear and return is irregular, comprising a mixture of timber sliding sash windows and largely replacement timber single-pane casement windows. A third-floor window on the rear elevation, originally blind, has more recently been concealed with red brick.

Setting and Plan

The house fronts directly onto the pavement, forming part of the continuous terrace of eight similar dwellings lining the west side of Queen Street. Its north and south sides abut Nos 1 and 3 Queen Street respectively. To the rear is a small yard enclosed by a rendered wall.

Historical Background

Queen Street was laid out around 1840 and the first buildings along it were in place by at least 1847. Its development, along with the adjoining Great James Street and Clarendon Street, was driven by a period of economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As John Hume has noted, the period 1825–1850 saw the reconstruction of buildings within the city walls alongside the first development of housing outside them at Bogside and Edenballymore. Queen Street was the second major new street in the area, following Great James Street, which had been laid out around 1833.

The First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore shows that the Queen Street area was at that time rural hinterland with few significant structures, and that the city's developed 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 institutional buildings: the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College. The only building in the area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house built around 1815. Robert Simpson, in his Annals of Derry (1847), recorded that the district later covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street and the surrounding lanes had originally comprised meadow ground without a house.

The development of uniform rows of three-storey townhouses established a new and affluent quarter that quickly became the preferred address 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 the project represented the most ambitious urban development in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619.

O'Hagan's contemporary plan of Londonderry (1847) recorded the street as Queen's Street and noted that at least twelve houses had been constructed along it by that date. Nos 1–8 Queen Street and Nos 9–12 Queen Street are among the earliest terraced dwellings within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. No. 2 Queen Street appears on O'Hagan's 1847 plan with a rear outbuilding, now demolished. The layout of Nos 1–8 had not changed by the Second Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, and no further buildings had been added along the street in the intervening period.

Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded that Nos 1–8 Queen Street were leased out by Thomas Major, a landowner resident in Creggan. No. 2 was valued at £17 and was occupied by a Mr James McCorkell, described in the Ulster Town Directories as a merchant who also served as local secretary and treasurer for the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews. Despite Thomas Major's death in 1858, Nos 2–8 continued to be administered by his estate until the cancellation of the Annual Revisions in 1931. The McCorkell family remained in occupation until 1911, when the house first fell vacant for a period of at least twenty years; by 1931 it remained empty and its assessed value had fallen to £15 10s.

By 1935, ownership had passed to a Mr James Mitchell, and the First Revaluation of that year raised the assessed value to £21. The Second Revaluation (1956–72) increased this further to £23 and recorded that the occupant, a Ms Emma Bradley, had purchased the house outright since the 1930s. In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated the mid-19th century streets and terraces as the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. Nos 1–8 Queen Street were subsequently listed in 1980.

In 2013, Calley described Nos 1–8 Queen Street as the earliest buildings along Queen Street, characterising them as smooth-rendered three-storey, two-bay houses with deep-set square-headed window bays and round-headed doorways, diminished-scale second-storey bays, timber-framed doorways with Doric columns supporting dentilled entablatures and simple spider-web fanlights, most retaining their glazing bars, and all with large, deep chimneys, though their finishes have been altered over the years.

By the late 20th century, most of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Queen Street had been converted into offices for dentists, solicitors, and accountancy firms. In 1984, No. 2 Queen Street was converted from a private dwelling into residential flats. This conversion work included reslating the roof and replacing the glazing with Georgian-style sash windows. A new replica entrance door was fitted in 1985.