31 Clarendon St., Londonderry

31 Clarendon Street is a mid-terrace, two-bay, three-storey with attic, red brick Georgian-style townhouse built in 1862. It forms part of a group constructed in the same year as Nos. 29 and 33–51 Clarendon Street, and has group value with the wider run of Nos. 5–29 and 33–73 (excluding No. 53), which were built over a twenty-one year period and together line the south side of the street. The house sits within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. Its listing extends to both the house and its rear mews building.

EXTERIOR

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting rear return. The principal elevation faces north onto Clarendon Street and is set behind a low rendered wall surmounted by black-painted replacement metal railings. The main roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles and a pitched roof dormer to the front. A large rendered chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge, with seven clay pots. Cast-iron guttering and circular downpipes serve the front elevation.

The principal north elevation is laid in Flemish brick bond with a rendered plinth. The entrance doorway has a three-centred arch opening with a moulded surround to the right, a recessed moulded cornice supported by columns of the Doric order on either side, a painted timber four-panelled door, and an Adam-style fanlight above. All window openings are square-headed with painted cement-rendered reveals and painted sills. Unless noted otherwise, all windows are 6/6 timber sliding sashes. There is a single window to the right of the door at ground floor level, and two windows to both the first and second floors, though the upper-floor openings are not aligned with those below. A narrow pitched roof dormer, centred on the elevation, contains a 6/3 timber sliding sash window.

The east and west elevations are abutted by the adjoining Nos. 29 and 33 Clarendon Street respectively.

The south rear elevation is brick, three storeys with attic. A brick, pitched-roof, three-storey rear return projects to the left; this is abutted by a modern pitched-roof two-storey brick extension of no interest, which is itself further abutted by a modern mono-pitched roof brick single-storey extension, also of no interest. The right bay of the main block has a single 6/6 timber sliding sash to the ground floor, a single three-pane timber casement to the first floor, and a single 6/6 timber sliding sash to the second floor. The left bay is abutted by the rear return; the exposed section has a 3/3 timber sliding sash window. The south gable of the three-storey rear return is abutted by the modern two-storey and single-storey brick extensions with timber casement windows of no interest; the exposed section has a single 6/6 timber sliding sash at first-floor level. The east and west faces of the rear return were not viewed at the time of survey.

The two-storey mews building to the rear is rendered with a natural slate roof and clipped eaves. Its north face has three 6/6 timber sliding sash windows to the first floor and a 6/6 timber sliding sash directly below the middle first-floor window at ground-floor level; the remainder of the ground floor was not viewed at the time of survey. The east gable is abutted by the mews building of No. 29 Clarendon Street, with the exposed section blank. The west face is fully abutted by the mews building of No. 33. The south face has a modern flush fire door to the far right and two blind former window openings to the left at ground-floor level, with three blind former window openings to the first floor aligned above the ground-floor openings.

Roofing materials are natural slate throughout. Rainwater goods to the north are cast iron; those to the south are uPVC. External walling is brick; windows are timber.

INTERIOR

The conversion to office use and the internal linking of the property with No. 33 has resulted in some modernisation of the interior. Despite this, much of the original internal detailing survives.

SETTING

The house was built as part of a row of twelve mid-Victorian townhouses lining the south side of Clarendon Street. The front elevation faces north and is set behind the low rendered wall with replacement metal railings described above. To the rear there is a small enclosed yard bounded to the south by the two-storey mews building, whose well-preserved survival adds to the interest of the property.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with construction of the first dwellings commencing around 1853. The street — and the parallel development of Great James Street and Queen Street — was a response to significant growth in the economy and population of Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As John Hume has noted, during the period 1825–1850 reconstruction of the city's buildings within the walls took place alongside the development, for the first time, 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. At that date 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 or no domestic architecture erected in the same period. The only building in the area predating the early Victorian development is 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." Robert Simpson, writing in The Annals of Derry (1847), recorded 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. The construction of uniform rows of neat three-storey townhouses established a new affluent quarter that quickly 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 the development represented the most ambitious project of urban planning in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city in the years 1613–19.

A plan of Londonderry dated 1847, which depicted the proposed layout of Clarendon Street at least a decade before it was completed, shows 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 it had been renamed Clarendon Street in honour of George Villiers, Fourth Earl of Clarendon (1800–1870), Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1847 and 1852. The second edition of the Ordnance Survey map confirms the street had been renamed by at least 1853. Although the 1847 plan showed Clarendon 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 throughout the 1850s; Mullin records that construction of the remainder of the street did not recommence until the mid-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 only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street; in that year additional leases were advertised for building ground on the northern side.

Nos. 29–51 Clarendon Street, including No. 31, were constructed in 1862 as part of the second phase of the street's development. No. 31 (along with the adjoining No. 29) was built for Smyth Osbourne, an agent with Imperial Fire Insurance who held business offices on Foyle Street, and was originally valued at £29 in 1862. In 1901 the house was occupied by William Williamson, employed as a commission agent; the census return for that year described his house as a first-class dwelling consisting of ten rooms. Ownership remained with the Osbourne family until the cancellation of the Annual Revisions in 1931, by which point the First Revaluation of 1935 had increased the value to £41 and ownership had passed to R. W. and Anne Cunningham. The house remained in use as a private dwelling at the time of the Second Revaluation (1956–72), which reduced its value to £37 and noted that a Dr T. McCabe had taken ownership.

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. 31 Clarendon Street was subsequently listed in 1979. By the 1980s Nos. 31 and 33 had been internally linked and converted into a single property for the accountancy firm of Fergus McAteer and Co. In 1988 both properties underwent renovation works including reslating of the roofs, repointing of the front elevations, and repair of the windows. In 2013 Calley described Nos. 29–39 Clarendon Street as "terrace houses with Doric doorway columns." Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street now remain in residential use, the majority having been converted to offices for solicitors, dentists, and accountancy firms in the late 20th century. Nos. 31 and 33 continue to be occupied by Fergus McAteer and Co.