42 Clarendon Street, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 7ET

42 Clarendon Street is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey-with-attic Georgian-style townhouse built in red brick in 1864. It sits on the north side of Clarendon Street within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, Londonderry, and forms part of a cohesive row of eleven similar early-to-mid-Victorian townhouses that share group value with Nos. 6–40 and 44–48 Clarendon Street. The house was constructed together with Nos. 38–40 and 44 Clarendon Street for William McIlwee, a carpenter and builder who held business premises on Foyle Street. It retains much of its original character and detailing.

Architectural Description

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. It sits behind a low painted rendered wall, with substantial granite flags paving the approach to the principal entrance. The roof is pitched slate with black clay ridge tiles and is fitted with modern rooflights to both front and rear. A large brick chimney stack rises parallel to and from the centre of the ridge, fitted with ten clay pots — a feature that distinguishes this house and its neighbour No. 44 from the majority of the terrace, where chimney stacks sit to the sides of the ridge rather than along it. Cast-iron guttering and circular downpipes serve the front and rear, with uPVC rainwater goods to the rear extension.

The principal south-facing front elevation is built in Flemish bond brick over a rendered plinth. All windows are two-over-two-pane timber sliding sash, set within square-headed openings with painted cement rendered reveals and painted sills. The entrance doorway has a three-centred arched opening with a moulded cornice supported by columns of the Doric order on either side, enclosing a four-panelled painted timber door with a plain fanlight above. At ground floor there is a single window to the right of the doorway. The first and second floors each have two windows, though these upper-floor openings are not vertically aligned with the ground-floor windows.

The north-facing rear elevation is unpainted cement render, three storeys with attic. A three-storey unpainted cement rendered rear return stands to the right, built at half-landing height and further abutted by a modern single-storey extension of no architectural interest. The left bay of the rear elevation has a single six-over-six timber sliding sash window to each of the ground, first, and second floors, again with the upper-floor windows not aligned with the ground-floor opening. The rear return is surmounted by a window, and there is a single rooflight to the left-hand side of the slated pitched roof at the rear. The north face of the rear return is abutted by the modern single-storey extension, and the rear return also has six-over-six timber sliding sash windows to the first and second floors. At ground floor on the east face of the rear return there is a uPVC door to the far left; upper floors on this face were not visible at the time of survey. The west face was also not visible at the time of survey. The east and west sides of the main body of the building are abutted by the adjoining Nos. 40 and 44 Clarendon Street respectively.

To the north end of the site stands a roofless mews building.

Historical Context

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period as part of the most ambitious programme of town planning in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city between 1613 and 1619. The geometric street pattern followed the Georgian model also used on Great James Street and Queen Street, driven by significant growth in the city's economy and population during the mid-19th century. The first edition of the Ordnance Survey map of 1830 shows that the Clarendon Street area in the townland of Edenballymore was at that time rural hinterland. By 1830, the city's built extent had reached no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street, and the only significant structures north of the walls were isolated institutional buildings such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College, with little or no domestic architecture in between. The only building in the immediate area predating the Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house of around 1815. Robert Simpson, writing in his Annals of Derry in 1847, recorded that the land later occupied by Great James Street, William Street, and the surrounding lanes had originally been open meadow without a house.

The street first appeared in a plan of Londonderry dated 1847, which showed its proposed layout under the name Ponsonby Street, named after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. By the 1850s it had been renamed Clarendon Street in honour of George Villiers, Fourth Earl of Clarendon (1800–1870), Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1847 to 1852. The second edition Ordnance Survey map confirms the new name was in use by at least 1853. Although the 1847 plan showed the street extending from the quay up to Francis Street, only the lower section between the Strand Road and Queen Street had been laid out by 1853. Development progressed slowly through the decade: in 1851 building ground was advertised on Clarendon Street, Queen Street, and Patrick Street to let in perpetuity by Skipton & Miller, and Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street. Further leases for building ground on the northern side were advertised in that same year.

No. 42 was built in 1864 as part of the second phase of the street's development. When first valued that year it was assessed at £21 and was occupied by a Ms. McDonnell. By 1901, the house was occupied by Margaret McPherson, described in that year's census as a house mistress with income from stock investments; the census classified the property as a first-class dwelling containing ten rooms. Ownership had passed to a Mr. Frances McPherson in 1888, and by the time of the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935, a Mr. John H. McCrea was recorded as owner. The McCrea family still owned the property at the close of the Second Revaluation, at which point the total rateable value was set at £31. Throughout its history, the occupants of Clarendon Street were drawn from the city's merchant and professional classes, and few of these mid-Victorian townhouses are now used as private residences; most were converted to offices for solicitors, dentists, and accountancy firms in the late 20th century. At the time of the most recent survey, No. 42 was in use as offices for a local film and television production company.

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. 42 was listed the following year in 1979.

Alterations

The building has undergone several recorded alterations. In 1983 the roof and chimney were repaired. In 1993 the doorcase was repaired in timber, making use of the original capitals and bases. A photograph dated 2002 records that a modern dormer window that had been added to the front of the property was subsequently removed.