71 Clarendon St., Londonderry

71 Clarendon Street, Londonderry

This is a Victorian mid-terraced townhouse built around 1861 in a Georgian style, located on the south side of Clarendon Street within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. The architect is unknown. The building is two bays wide and rises three storeys with a dormer attic above. It was built as a pair with No. 73 next door, and although later in date than some of its neighbours, both houses follow the Georgian scale, form, and brick colour of the earlier houses further down the street. The original plan form has been largely retained with much historic fabric intact, despite conversion to offices in 2012.

Architectural Description

The building is rectangular on plan with a projecting return to the rear and an additional single-storey extension to the yard on the south side. The principal, north-facing elevation is set behind a low rendered plinth wall, with the entrance door raised one step above pavement level.

The north elevation is laid in Flemish bond red brick. Windows to the ground, first, and second floors are square-headed 6-over-6 timber sliding sash. Above eaves level, a single projecting dormer with a pitched roof contains a 6-over-3 timber sliding sash window; the dormer is painted to the front with vertical slate to its sides. The entrance doorway has a segmental arch opening with a moulded cornice supported by a pair of columns, a plain fanlight above, and a painted timber four-panelled door.

The roof is natural slate with black clay ridge tiles to both the main roof and the rear return. A large red brick chimney stack rises from the east side, centred on the ridge, and carries six clay pots. Single rooflights are present on both the north- and south-facing roof slopes. uPVC guttering runs to both front and rear elevations.

The rear, south-facing elevation is three storeys, with a three-storey pitched-roof return built at half-landing height. The walls to the south are smooth rendered and unpainted above ground floor level. There is a door opening into the rear yard. At ground floor there is a timber casement window; the first and second floors of the main building have 6-over-6 sliding sash windows. On the return, the first floor has a 6-over-6 sliding sash window, while the second floor has replacement timber casement windows. A flat-roofed single-storey building wraps around the south and east faces of the return, finished in white painted render with timber casement windows. A single-storey coal house abuts this flat-roofed extension in the yard; it is finished in white painted render with a vertically boarded timber door, a natural slate monopitch roof, and a uPVC gutter and downpipe.

The east and west sides of the building adjoin No. 69 and No. 73 Clarendon Street respectively.

Materials summary: natural slate roof; uPVC rainwater goods; red brick walling to the north elevation; smooth unpainted render above ground floor to the south; timber sliding sash windows to the north; a mix of timber casements and sliding sash windows to the south.

Setting

Nos. 71 and 73 Clarendon Street form a pair set within a terrace of ten houses lining the south side of Clarendon Street, close to its junction with Francis Street. The street is characterised by long terraces of Georgian-style townhouses that step down in a strong linear formation towards the River Foyle. To the rear, the yard is enclosed by painted rendered walls.

Historical Background

Clarendon Street was laid out in the early Victorian period, with construction of the first dwellings beginning around 1853. The development of this area was part of a broader period of economic and population growth in Londonderry during the mid-19th century. As historian John Hume has noted, between 1825 and 1850 reconstruction within the city walls took place alongside, for the first time, the development of housing outside the walls at Bogside and Edenballymore.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 for the townland of Edenballymore records that the Clarendon Street area was originally rural hinterland. 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 significant 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 in the same period. The only building in the area predating the early Victorian development is Foyle Cottage, a Regency house constructed around 1815. Robert Simpson, in his Annals of Derry (1847), recorded that all the district then covered by Great James Street, William Street, Little James Street, and the surrounding lanes had originally comprised meadow ground without a house.

Housing development in this area began in the late Georgian period and continued into the Victorian era. The construction of uniform rows of three-storey townhouses established a new affluent district that quickly became home to the city's merchant and professional classes. The street layout of Clarendon Street, Great James Street, and Queen Street followed a geometric pattern characteristic of Georgian town planning, and represented the most ambitious planning exercise in Londonderry since the construction of the walled city in 1613–19.

The street appears on O'Hagan's 1847 plan of Londonderry — at least a decade before it was fully completed — where it is labelled Ponsonby Street, named after the Right Reverend Richard Ponsonby (1772–1853), Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. By the 1850s the street had been renamed Clarendon Street in honour of George Villiers (1800–1870), the Fourth Earl of Clarendon and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1847 and 1852. The second edition Ordnance Survey map confirms the name had changed to Clarendon Street by at least 1853.

Although the 1847 plan showed Clarendon Street running 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 1850s; Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded only nine dwellings along the entire length of the street. In 1851 Skipton and Miller had advertised building ground on Clarendon Street, Queen Street, and Patrick Street to let in perpetuity, followed by a second drive in 1856 when additional leases were advertised for building ground on the northern side of the street.

No. 71 was built in 1861 as part of this second phase of development. The three-storey house was originally valued at £26 and was built for a Mr James McCluskey, who also owned the adjoining No. 73. The first recorded occupant was John McCay, a local woollen draper who operated from premises at the Diamond. By 1911 the house was occupied by Elizabeth O'Kane; the census of that year described it as a first-class dwelling containing seven inhabited rooms. In 1929 ownership of both No. 71 and No. 73 passed to the Gosselin family, but by the time of the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935 a Mr Stevenson had acquired the house. By the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) the property was valued at £31.

In 1978 the Department of the Environment designated Clarendon Street and the surrounding streets a Conservation Area, described as an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. No. 71 was listed in 1979. In a 2013 survey, Calley described Nos. 67–73 Clarendon Street as three-and-a-half-storey brick terrace houses, essentially the same in scale and form as the earlier houses at Nos. 6–48, with the most notable difference being the dormer windows on the roofs of Nos. 67–73.

Few of the mid-Victorian townhouses along Clarendon Street remain in residential use. The majority were converted to offices for local dentists, solicitors, and accountancy firms in the late 20th century. No. 71 was converted to offices in 2012.