36 Great James Street, Londonderry, Co. Londonderry, BT48 7DA

36 Great James Street is a mid-Victorian, mid-terraced painted rendered dwelling of three storeys over a basement, built in 1871–72. It sits on the north side of Great James Street, a steep hill running between St. Eugene's Cathedral to the west and Strand Road to the east, and was constructed at the same time as its immediate neighbours, nos. 38 and 40. The house carries group value with those neighbours and with the wider run of dwellings of this era along Great James Street, and forms part of the Clarendon Street Conservation Area.

The building is rectangular on plan, two bays wide, and is designed in a Georgian style despite its Victorian construction date. The principal elevation faces south and is reached directly from street level by a single step up. Walls are of smooth painted render throughout. Window openings are square-headed, set on painted masonry sills, with a continuous painted sill band running across the first floor. Glazing to the ground, first, and second floors consists of 2/2 timber sliding sash windows, with the ground-floor bays aligned directly below those above. The basement is lit by a replacement 2/2 uPVC casement window.

The entrance doorcase is a particularly fine feature, comprising timber panelled pilasters on plinth blocks, flanked by plaster console brackets with acanthus leaf detail. Between the pilasters sit recessed double doors of two raised-and-fielded timber panels with a moulded timber cornice, topped by a plain elliptical glazed fanlight. Rainwater goods to the front elevation consist of a replacement uPVC ogee gutter on rise-and-fall brackets, terminating at a swan-neck cast-iron circular downpipe to the right. The pitched slate roof carries clay ridge tiles, and a rebuilt red brick chimney stack rises from the east side carrying six clay pots, one of which is missing. A modern Velux rooflight has been inserted to the front roof slope.

The rear north elevation is three storeys, finished in smooth cement render left unpainted. A rear return is finished in smooth plain painted render and carries a lean-to slated pitched roof with modern Velux rooflights. Window openings to the rear and return are square-headed on unpainted masonry sills and are irregular in pattern, comprising a mixture of surviving timber sliding sash windows and largely replacement timber and uPVC casement windows. A large modern single-storey extension has been added to the rear return, with a slated monopitch roof containing four Velux rooflights, uPVC rainwater goods, and uPVC windows and doors. Since the last survey, a single-storey conservatory with a pitched PVC-glazed roof has been constructed to the rear of this extension; it has rendered blockwork gable walls to each side with metal coping to the verges, which rise above the garden walls on either side. The east and west sides of the house are adjoined by the neighbouring properties nos. 34 and 38 Great James Street.

Internally, much of the original plan form survives. The principal alteration to the interior has been the installation of modern en-suite bathrooms.

The house is set within a terraced row lining the north side of Great James Street and has a large rear garden enclosed by red brick and schist walls, with a pedestrian timber gate to the north boundary.

Great James Street was originally laid out around 1833, with the first buildings appearing by 1835–37, the earliest being Londonderry Third Presbyterian Church erected in those years. Its development, along with that of the adjoining Queen Street (laid out around 1847) and Clarendon Street (around 1853), was driven by a period of significant economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As the historian 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. Great James Street was the first major new street in this area. The first edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1830 record that the Great James Street area was then rural hinterland, with urban development extending no further than Waterloo Place, Abbey Street, and William Street. In the early decades of the 19th century, the only significant construction north of the walls had been isolated institutions such as the Londonderry Infirmary, the Lunatic Asylum, and Foyle College, with virtually no domestic architecture. The sole building in what is now the Clarendon Street Conservation Area predating early-Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency-style house of around 1815. Robert Simpson, writing in The Annals of Derry (1847), recorded that the whole district covered by Great James Street and its surrounding lanes had originally comprised meadow ground without a house. The development of uniform rows of neat three-storey townhouses established a new and affluent quarter that became the preferred address of the city's merchant and professional classes. The geometric street pattern followed was characteristic of Georgian town planning, and the scheme represented the most ambitious planning project in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city in 1613–19.

No. 36 was constructed in 1871–72 along with the adjoining nos. 38–40. The buildings were first recorded in the Annual Revisions, which noted that the row was leased by George Skipton, a local landowner of Beechill House who owned many of the plots on the north side of Great James Street. In the 1870s the building, valued at £25, was occupied by William Dickson, a local saddler and harness maker with premises on Waterloo Street. Research carried out by the current owners records that Dickson had promised Skipton that he would construct a good and substantial dwelling house and expend thereon the sum of three hundred pounds at the least. The completed no. 36 was depicted on the Annual Revisions Town Plan of around 1873–1910, showing the building in its current layout including its three-storey rear return. The 1901 census return described the house as a first-class dwelling of ten rooms. Dickson's family continued to reside at the address until 1947, and in the 1930s his son John A. Dickson purchased the building outright for £400. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the assessed value rose to £34, and by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) it stood at £35. In 1955 the Dicksons rented the house to a Miss Alice Roulston, who resided there until at least the 1970s. In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated the area as a Conservation Area, the same year in which the current owners acquired the property and undertook an extensive renovation retaining much of the original interior fabric. In 1984 a bomb exploded outside the house, damaging the roof and windows. Around 1990 the building was converted to a bed and breakfast known as The Saddler's House, named in honour of William Dickson, and the modern kitchen and dining room extension to the rear was added in 2008.