31 McMaster Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Description at 26/02/2013
Description as 19/07/2011 except all windows replaced to front elevation including new timber panelled door with camber headed transom light. Paint removed from all brickwork including plinth, brick chamfered reveals and camber headed window reveals.

Description at 19/07/2011
A two-storey single-bay (wider end-terrace at south) late Victorian terrace built c.1898 by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, located on the west side of McMaster Street, East Belfast.

Roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles, red brick chimney stack at south side; painted ogee profile cast-iron rainwater goods, supported on projecting polychrome brick eaves course on ovolo moulded corbel course. Walls are English garden-wall bonded red brick laid with alternating courses of headers and stretchers with two polychrome brick string courses (including a continuous brick and sill course at first floor); windows at ground floor are boarded, 1/1 timber sliding sashes at first floor, door is replacement timber panelled with square headed transom light, windows and door contained within camber headed reveals with polychrome brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, projecting masonry sills.

Principal (east) symmetrical elevation contains entrance door at centre accessed via tiled threshold; entrance is flanked by single window opening (now blocked) at each side each surmounted by window at first floor.

North gable is abutted by No.29 McMaster Street (HB26/08/001AA).

Access to house and yard not provided and remainder of rear elevation not visible from entry at west. Access to enclosed yard from entry via timber sheeted entrance door at east, contained within high level brick walling at all sides.

South gable is abutted by No.33 McMaster Street (HB26/08/001EE).

Setting:

Located at the south end of the west terrace two-storey block the house faces onto McMaster Street. The wide street formerly cobbled is now largely concrete with small cobbled area at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs and original lamp posts and electric lighting (former gas lights). Original tiled street signage at north and south. Rear elevation is enclosed by high level stretcher bonded modern red brick walling with painted vertically sheeted timber entrance door at centre, assessed via narrow entry which runs north south between back yards of Parker Street and McMaster Street. The street narrows towards Major Street at south.

Roof: Natural Slate
Walling: English garden-wall bonded red brick
Windows: 1/1 timber sliding sashes
RWG: Ogee profile cast-iron

Historical information

The current dwelling is one of a terrace of 37 parlour houses built in several phases between 1899 and 1908 to designs by John Fraser & Son. (DoE Conservation Plan; Street Directories)

McMaster Street is the only late Victorian terrace in Belfast to have survived in reasonable original condition and these workers’ houses are an important link with the city’s past as a significant world centre of shipbuilding. (DoE Conservation Area Plan) In the closing decades of the nineteenth century Harland and Wolff developed a shipyard on Queen’s Island which was employing 9000 men by the year 1900. Ballymacarrett was also a centre for other businesses that traded around the world, including ropeworks, linen manufacture, engineering and fertiliser. Ballymacarret, which in the mid-nineteenth century had been an area of fields, cottages and mansions around an industrial core, became gradually given over to rows of terraces, housing the workers who were, to a large degree the generators of Belfast’s new-found prosperity. (OS maps; DoE Conservation Area Plan)

McMaster Street was built in several phases, beginning with a row of 2½ storey houses, numbers 2 to 14 which were in place by 1899. The second phase of construction saw the building of numbers 1-11, also 2½ storey, which are noted in the street directory for 1900, together with ‘houses in course of erection’. By the time of the census in March 1901 numbers 1-35 were complete, (37 does not appear, but is listed in the 1901 street directory) and the remainder of the houses, numbers 16-52 were added by 1908. The designers were John Fraser & Son, active between the 1890s and 1910s and architects of a number of terraced streets in Belfast, such as Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place which are similar to McMaster Street. (www.dia.ie)

The houses on the western side of the street first enter valuation records in 1900. They are of the ‘parlour’ type and were built to a very high specification with running water and flush toilets, emerging technologies for worker’s housing at the time. The houses benefitted from building controls that required houses to have a rear entrance and a back yard with a toilet. Gas was piped in for lighting but electricity was not commonplace until the 1930s and lamp-lighters and window-tappers were daily visitors. (Haines) The male inhabitants were often employed in shipbuilding, females in the linen or rope industry. Larger families lived at the north end of the street in the houses with an attic storey. (DoE Conservation Area Plan)

The present house was the residence of Jane McKibbin, who leased it from the developer John McMaster. In 1900 it was said to be four years old, but this appears to be an exaggeration, as the house was not likely to have been more than a year old at this time. Numbers 13 to 37, all houses and yards of two storeys, are valued at £8. These houses towards the south end of the street are slightly smaller than numbers 1-11 which were given a higher valuation. The last four houses in the terrace, from 31 to 37 are on a different plan to the remainder, being shallow and wide, due to the tapering nature of the plot on which the terrace is built. The present house contained 3 bedrooms and was fitted with gas. The rent was 5s weekly and the cost of construction was estimated at £76.

Jane McKibbin is listed in the 1901 census as a widow living with her four children and her sister. The older three children were working as a tobacco stripper, a grocer’s assistant and a messenger and the sister was a reeler in a ‘steam mill’. A succession of tenants followed, Henry Smith, labourer (1905), William Mahood, guard who was later to live at number 17, Charles Bennett, joiner (1909) and Edward McMeekin, marine engineer, who was resident at the time of the 1911 census. McMeekin lived with his wife and three young children. The next tenants were James Buckley, bricklayer (1913), F Moore, joiner (1915) and W A Hewitt, caulker (1938).

The Hewitt family was forced to move out of the house during the Belfast blitz. There were four air raids on Belfast during April and May 1941 during which over half the city’s housing stock was damaged. Although McMaster Street was not destroyed, the area was targeted by raids carried out on April 7/8th and May 4/5th and the 1942 street directory notes that most of the houses in the street had been vacated, including number 27, probably as a result of fire damage. By 1943 the majority of residents had returned to their homes, including the Hewitts and Mrs Ada Hewitt is noted to be the householder in 1943. In the early 1970s the house was vacant for a period and was then taken over by Robert Beck (1977) who lived there until at least 1980. (Street Directories; Report on Belfast air raids)

In recent years East Belfast has experienced substantial change and many of the industries that led to its initial growth have contracted or disappeared. Redevelopment in the 1970s led to the demolition of many of the other terraces in the area but in 1987 McMaster Street was listed and in 1994 the area was designated a conservation area by the DoE. Two of the houses have been restored by Hearth. (DoE Conservation Area Plan)

References

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/3/1 – First Edition Ordnance Survey map 1834
2. PRONI OS/6/3/2 – Second Edition Ordnance Survey map 1858
3. PRONI OS/6/3/3 – Third Edition Ordnance Survey map 1902
4. PRONI OS/6/3/4 – Fourth Edition Ordnance Survey map 1920-21
5. PRONI OS/6/3/5 – Fifth Edition Ordnance Survey map 1931
6. PRONI VAL/7/B/8/4 – Belfast Revaluation Field Books 1900
7. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/A/28 – Annual Revisions 1897-1905
8. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/L/4 – Annual Revisions 1906-1914
9. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/L/8 – Annual Revisions 1915-1930
10. PRONI VAL/3/B/3/11 – First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland 1935
11. PRONI VAL/4/B/7/28 – Second General Revaluation of Northern Ireland 1956-1972
12. Belfast Street Directories (1899-1980)
13. Census of Ireland (1901; 1911)
14. PRONI LA/43/18/H/1 – Personal Injuries of Civilians in Belfast Blitz (1941)
15. PRONI CAB/3/A/60 – Civil Defence – air raids on Belfast (1940-41)
16. PRONI CAB/3/A/68 – Report on air raids on Belfast and aftermath (1941)

Secondary Sources

1. ‘McMaster Street Conservation Area’ Belfast: Department of the Environment, 1994.
2. Haines, K., ‘East Belfast: Paintings and stories from harbour to hills’ Donaghadee: Cottage Publications, 2001.
3. First Survey Record – HB26/08/001 (1984)
4. Dictionary of Irish Architects - http://www.dia.ie

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
H+. Alterations enhancing the building
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
R. Age

Evaluation

A two-storey single-bay late Victorian terrace built c.1896 by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, located on the west side of McMaster Street, East Belfast. Having survived the German Blitz in 1941 and the widespread demolition during developments of the 1970s the terrace is part of a complete street of late Victorian terraced housing. The terrace retains much original character, including polychromatic brick string courses and camber headed window openings. Built close to Harland and Wolff ship yards, this terrace provides a link with Belfast’s industrial past and is of further significance as it was originally designed to new housing and planning regulations, intended to improve the standard of living for working class people in Belfast at the turn of the twentieth century. Number 31 has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street.