9 Havelock Place

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey/ three bay house with semi-basement set in a larger terrace.

Pitched natural slate roof with render to right verge only. Cement rendered coped chimney to each gable, both with octagonal yellow 19thC pots. Two wall head dormers to front pitch with a hipped natural slate roofs and exposed rafter tails. Masonry walls with 1/1 sash windows to front wall and blank cheeks. Deep slightly advanced eaves course carries half-round metal gutters.

Principal elevation (to street) is lined rendered and painted with stepped V-channelled stucco quoins. Central bay is half width of the other two bays and contains the main entrance at ground floor. Five steps enclosed by a splayed dwarf wall carrying plain railings rise over the basement passage. Entrance consists of a pair of narrow two panelled doors (raised and fielded panels) set below an infilled semicircular fanlight. Opening has a broad painted render architrave. All windows are exposed box 1/1 sliding sashes with painted granite cills. There are two such windows to left and to right bays. At first floor are five identical windows in line with ground floor ones but diminished in height. Left bay of basement has a modern double-leaf timber door at left and 1/1 sash to right. Its central bay is enclosed by rendered walls underneath the entrance approach. Right bay has two 1/1 sash windows.

Left gable is completely abutted by an adjacent house.

Right gable is partially abutted by an adjacent house and its exposed section is blank.

Rear elevation is cement rendered and abutted to centre by a stairwell return, which has a hipped natural slate roof, which ties into the rear pitch of the main roof. The cheeks of the stairwell return are blank. Its rear-facing wall has a large modern window between ground and first floor and a 1/1 sash window between first floor and attic level. There are two 1/1 sliding sash windows are ground floor left. The remainder of ground floor is abutted by a single storey return with pitched natural slate roof, aligned parallel with main roof. At first floor the left and right bays each have a single 1/1 sash window. At second floor there are dormers as façade.

The rear return is abutted to each gable by yard walls and its rear wall is abutted by a large modern single storey extension with corrugated metal roof, which fills the whole rear yard. All of no interest.

Front area is enclosed by a rendered and painted dwarf wall carrying plain railings with matching gate to main entrance and one to left end.

Historical information

Possibly of late 18th or early 19th C date. Shown on the 1834 Valuation town map and described in the 1835 Valuation as measuring 43ft x 26ft x 23ft6in high; there was also a basement. By 1861, the premises had become the Royal Hotel; its measurements accord with those of the 1830s, suggesting the same building. Seemingly reverts to a house around 1864, and then becomes a convent in 1890.
In the late 1920s the building was taken over by the HQ of INF branch 425.

Primary sources:
1. Valuation town map, 1834 (PRONI, VAL/1D/3/2).
2. First Valuation book, 1835 (PRONI, VAL/1B/367).
3. OS town map, 1861 (PRONI, VAL/12E/127/1/7).
4. Second Valuation book, 1863 (PRONI, VAL/2B/3/65B, p.49).
5. Valuation Revision book (PRONI, VAL/12B/22/23).

Secondary source;
1. Information from occupant 30/11/1999.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This building has some external character but little of interest internally or at the rear. Insufficient remains of the historic fabric to merit statutory protection.