53 Sunnyside Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

End of terrac 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 clay ridge tiles and redbrick chimneystack rising from west gable. Wall-head dormer is shared with the adjoining house No.51 (HB26/02/019E) 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 sandstone quoins to the west end and 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 uPVC 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 footpath with front garden enclosed by hedge.

West gable has a single modern window opening to ground floor level with concrete lintel and a pair of diminutive window openings at attic level.

Rear elevation abutted by shared two-storey return. Original redbrick walling laid in English garden wall bond with original square-headed window openings having uPVC windows. Pebbledash rendered flat-roofed extension occupies former rear yard with former back garden now part of the communal rear access lane.

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

Setting:
Forming part of a terrace of six similar houses lining the north side of Sunnyside Street with communal rear access lane running along its west gabled elevation.

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 53 was Samuel S McCormick, commercial traveller, followed by John Neill, gentleman (1880), Thomas A Morris, commercial traveller (1880), Martin Allen, commercial traveller (1884), Mrs Martin Allen (1887), W J Brown, manager of the Ormeau and Ulster brick works (1892), James Forsyth, cashier (1896) and in 1901 John Graham who was a furniture remover and lived wife and two adult children. His son was a joiner. By 1903 the tenant was William Johnston, commercial traveller and by 1910 Mrs Mary Martin who is listed in the 1911 census as a 68-year-old widow who ran a boarding house on the premises. Her boarders were a van man from Wexford and his wife and three young children.

Subsequent tenants were Robert Mercer, traveller (1913) and D Duffin, bootmaker (1933) who remained resident until 1976. The house remains 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.