49 Sunnyside Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Terraced two-storey with attic dormer redbrick house, built c.1870. L-shaped on plan facing south lining the north side of Sunnyside Street as part of a terrace of six similar houses.

Pitched artificial slate roof with black clay ridge tiles, replacement brick chimneystack to west with terracotta pots and rooflights inserted. Wall-head dormer is shared with the adjoining house No.47 (HB26/02/019C) having timber bargeboard, redbrick walling and diminutive square-headed window opening. Plastic guttering on painted stone eaves course with polychromatic brick frieze below. Redbrick walling laid in Flemish bond with painted sandstone plinth course. Square-headed window opening with painted masonry lintels, painted masonry sills and uPVC windows.

Front elevation is two windows wide with decorative painted masonry doorcase to the right, abutting that of the adjoining house. Doorcase comprises; square-headed door opening with replacement hardwood panelled door and rectangular overlight flanked by plain pilasters on plinth blocks and oversized foliate console brackets (that to the east shared with adjoining house) supporting shared lintel cornice and decorative segmental stone panel above. Door opens onto cobblelock front garden enclosed by replacement steel railings on brick wall.

West side elevation abutted by adjoining house No.51 (HB26/02/019E).

Rear elevation abutted by shared two-storey return. Redbrick walling laid in English garden wall bond with uPVC windows and masonry sills. Small enclosed rear yard with redbrick screen wall opening into rear garden.

East side elevation abutted by adjoining house No.47 (HB26/02/019C).

Setting:
Forming part of a terrace of six similar houses lining the north side of Sunnyside Street with communal rear access lane opening onto the street along the west gable of No.53 (HB26/02/019F).

Roof Artificial slate
RWG Plastic
Walling Redbrick
Windows UPVC

Historical information

This terrace of houses was built as a development by Thomas Fitzpatrick, on land he had purchased for the purpose. Fitzpatrick, described by Brett as ‘a really remarkable working sculptor’ is responsible for many fine examples of stone carving on Belfast’s buildings. His work can be seen, for example, on the Harbour Office and the Merchant Hotel. (Brett) Having begun as a sculptor in partnership with his brother William in the 1850s, he became a general building contractor in the 1860s and was active until the 1890s or later (www.dia.ie).

The area to the west of the Ormeau Road was largely open until the latter decades of the nineteenth century. The land was partly divided into spacious plots for large mansions but had been very sparsely built on. The terrace was one of the first developments along the newly laid out Sunnyside Street and, until the early decades of the twentieth century few houses had been built along the road. The area has since become very intensively developed and what was once an isolated row of dwellings has been swallowed up by Belfast’s continued expansion.

The terrace first enters valuation records as unfinished houses and yards in 1869. The buildings are completed and valued in 1870 at £15 each and, according to surviving papers of the Fitzpatrick Brothers the houses were then sold in pairs. Numbers 43 and 45 were sold to Thomas Neill, who occupied one of them and let out the other and numbers 51 and 53 were sold to Samuel McCormick who also occupied one while letting the other. The ownership of the middle pair is less certain, they seem to have passed through a number of landlords in quick succession but were both let out. Occupants of the houses would appear to have been comfortable, employed, as thousands were in the burgeoning city, as commercial travellers, clerks and shopkeepers; rarely able to afford a servant but generally involved in supervisory and clerical rather than manual work. A further two terraced houses were added to the east of the row between 1905 and 1909, but these are not included in the current listing. (Street Directories; PRONI D1905)

Numbering of the terrace changed several times and the identification of individual occupants is therefore at times uncertain. However, as far as can be determined, in 1870 the occupier of number 49 was Joseph Chapman, followed byHugh Small, schoolmaster (1877 ) Joseph McChesney, jeweller &c (1884) John H Howell, master Royal Academical Institution (1887) and in 1892 Anne M McKibbin. Anna McKibbin is listed in the 1901 census as a 70-year-old spinster who lived with her domestic servant.

Subsequent occupiers were J Maxwell, sanitary inspector (1904) and J Arnold, commercial traveller (1905) and at the time of the 1911 census the house was occupied by James Stronge, retired engineman from County Monaghan. The household included his wife, three children, a son-in-law and four grandchildren. His son, Thomas, was a Refreshment Manager, his older daughter an ornamenter and his son-in-law a chairmaker.

Stronge was followed by his son-in-law James Matthews in 1913 and then his daughter Miss J Stronge in 1933. Subsequent tenants were Mrs Melville (1935), Thomas Kerr (1939), R Pedlow (1953) and J Miskelly, bricklayer (1955). The house continues in use as a domestic dwelling.

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/3/4/1 – First Edition OS Map 1834
2. PRONI OS/6/3/4/2 – Second Edition OS map 1858
3. PRONI OS/6/3/4/3 – Third Edition OS Map 1902
4. PRONI OS/6/3/4/4 – Fourth Edition OS Map 1920-1
5. PRONI OS/6/3/4/5 – Fourth Edition OS Map 1931
6. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/A/1-45 – Annual Revisions (1863-1930)
7. Street Directories 1870-1980
8. 1901 census online
9. 1911 census online
10. PRONI D1905/1 – L’Estrange and Brett papers relating to Fitzpatrick Bros

Secondary Sources

1. Brett, C.E.B. “Buildings of Belfast 1700-1914” Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, revised edition 1985
2. www.dia.ie

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Terraced two-storey with attic dormer redbrick house, built c.1870. Forming part of a terrace of six similar houses lining the north side of Sunnyside Street. Extensively refubished with the loss of much original fabric, this house retains its overall composition and decorative detailing while making a marked contribution to the late nineteenth-century character of the street. However it is not of sufficient interest to consider listing individually or as part of a group.