24 Elmwood Ave

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Northeast facing three storey semi-detached dwelling with attic and having projecting bay windows to ground and first floor. Constructed in brick circa 1880 and located within the Queen’s Conservation area. Rectangular in plan with rear two storey rear return (“T” shaped) mirrored with number 26 (dwelling of multiple occupancy) and with exposed gable wall to East. Building currently used as Chaplaincy residence.

A pair of semi-detached red bricked terrace style buildings extending to three levels with attic storey above. Outer sides of each dwelling flanked with red brick chimneys, rectangular on plan, centred on ridge with brick corbelled top and each having ten terracotta chimney pots. Natural slate roof finish with terracotta ridge tiles, flush verges with raised stone dressed parapets and having painted corbelled eaves brackets at either side with heavily corbeled brick eaves punctuated with square blue and white terracotta tile across front of building. All rainwater goods metal. Attic level with one over one painted sliding sash window, with stone cill, set in small, slightly projecting gable aligned with bay windows below and having flush verge with raised stone topped parapet, adorned with circular fillial on top. Pair of one over one painted sliding sash windows directly beneath with adjacent single one over one sliding sash window. Continuous painted stone cill transversing entire frontage and supporting cantilevered brick dog toothed band above brick corbelled, flat roofed bays. Each, canted bay having three individual shallow arched window openings, topped with soldier course, with one over one painted sliding sash windows and adjacent, similarly styled window aligned with window above. Continuous painted stone cill/band extending across frontage, providing separation with ground floor bay window as described above. Entrance doors to both properties centrally located and having painted ornate broken pediment cornice supported with ornamental column, topped with garlands and framing semicircular timber fanlight above nine panelled, painted door, both of which are accessed via replaced brick steps, extending across both portals. Rustic stone plinth extends, either side of central steps, across entire street frontage.

Exposed gable of main block, facing Southeast blank except for small one over one uPVC framed window at first floor. Opposite gable attached to HB26 28 115 (Catholic Chaplaincy QUB – grade B+). Rear elevation with centrally positioned three storey gable facing Southwest and having a series of vertically stacked one over one top hung upvc windows either side of central apex. Further single storey hipped roof extension extends across width of gable and punctured with a series of replacement upvc doors and windows. Top floor fire exit balcony to right hand side (no. 24)

SETTING.

Having a distinct style, set in an urban context and located midway along the south side of Elmwood Avenue, the
setting is enhanced with the semi mature trees which define the front boundary with the wide public footpath behind which access is gained via linear steps to front doorways. Located directly opposite HB26/28/108 (QUB Dept of Geography – grade B1), adjacent to HB26/28/050 (grade B) and attached, right hand side, to HB26/28/115 (QUB Catholic Chaplaincy – grade B+). Access to rear via Elmwood Mews with access gained through painted timber sheeted door flanked by modern flat roofed brick buildings either side. Open communal grassed area with brick party wall to rear of 22 Elmwood Avenue defining southeast boundary and single storey rear extension to HB26/28/115 defining boundary to left hand side.

MATERIALS

Roof; Natural slate.
Walls: Red brick throughout – painted window cills and ornamental copings to parapets and entrance door surrounds
Windows: Painted, timber, double hung sliding sash; uPVC top hung windows.
RWG: Cast iron and cast aluminium. Upvc to rear.

Historical information

The current semi-detached pair of dwelling houses was constructed by the Linenhall Presbyterian Church, one of the pair (26) being used as a manse from at least 1887 while the other (24) was the home of a succession of businessmen and professional people. Designs were drawn up by Young & Mackenzie in 1879 and the dwellings were completed in 1880. Both buildings were taken over by the Methodist Chaplaincy of Queen’s University Belfast in the 1970s.

Elmwood Avenue acquired its name from the house ‘Elmwood’ (sometimes rendered as Elm Wood) rebuilt or remodelled 1856-8, on the site of an older 18th century house, by the banker, Edward Harris Clarke, who was succeeded at the house by his son, also called Edward Harris Clarke. The laying out of Elmwood Avenue through E H Clarke’s demesne was agreed by the Town Improvement Committee of Belfast Town Council in 1868. The avenue is first listed in Street Directories in 1870 with five inhabited houses and one just built. By 1884 development of the south side of the avenue was two thirds complete and the current semi-detached pair had been constructed between a terrace of six to the right (divided from the current dwellings by a narrow alleyway and now replaced by the Catholic chaplaincy) and a larger dwelling house to the left (surviving, now the Church of Ireland chaplaincy). The avenue had been fully developed to the South side by 1902. The North side of the avenue was gradually developed during the early decades of the 20th century and Elm Wood house itself survived until the 1960s when it was demolished in order to build the new Students’ Union.

The current pair of houses was built by the Linenhall Presbyterian Church, under the supervision of their minister Robert Knox. Linenhall Presbyterian Church was a Secession congregation, the first to be established in Belfast in the 1760s. During the time that Robert Knox was minister, the Linenhall Street congregation constructed a second church in Botanic Avenue, which opened in 1875, but continued to retain their old church (dating from 1839). It is therefore possible that the semi-detached pair of dwellings was built with the original intention of housing ministers for the two churches. Young & Mackenzie were engaged to carry out improvements to the old church, which were completed in 1876 and were subsequently also asked to design the semi-detached pair in 1879.

The Rev Robert Knox, a native of Strabane, was installed at Linenhall Street in 1843 and would have supervised the building of the two semi-detached houses, perhaps intending to live in one of them. However, he died in 1883 and the next Minister of the church, the Rev John McIlveen undertook the building of another new church at the Crescent which opened in 1887. The congregation subsequently moved from Linenhall Street church which was no longer used and Rev McIlveen made number 26 Elmwood Avenue into his manse.

In November 1879, the Town Improvement Committee had approved plans for two houses in Elmwood Avenue for the Committee of Linenhall Street Reformed Presbyterian Church. Plans for the buildings held by Belfast City Council state that the pair was designed by Young & Mackenzie (First Survey Card). The pair of dwellings were entered into valuation records in 1880 and were both leased from Rev Robert Knox, and valued at £44. By 1906 number 24 was leased from Rev William Smith and number 26 from the Committee of the Crescent Presbyterian Church.

Young & Mackenzie are notable for their longevity and their pivotal influence on Belfast’s development as the designers of many keynote city structures. They were also prolific domestic architects and, due to the firm’s close connections to the Presbyterian church, they are said to have dominated the design of Presbyterian manses in the period 1850-1910. The semi-detached pair at Elmwood Avenue is not typical of their manse designs, however, which tended to be large, architecturally subdued, villas in generous garden plots and it is not entirely clear whether either house was originally intended as a manse. The Elmwood Avenue pair feature some relatively exuberant details - the UAHS guide to the Queen’s area comments on the ‘elaborate Artisan Mannerist stuccoed and swagged entrance doors’ to the two houses.

Number 24 is listed in valuation records in 1880 as the residence of Edith Harris with Mary C Moore becoming the occupant in 1883. Mary C Moore was the widow of Rev Samuel J Moore, Presbyterian minister of Ballymena West Church until his death in 1876. Mrs Moore was a supporter of many charitable causes relating to her religious beliefs and donated a 1710 prayerbook to the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society in 1890.

Mrs Moore’s daughter, Miss Moore appears to have continued to live in the house for several years after her mother’s death, but in 1898 the contents of the house were sold at auction, including a rosewood cottage piano by Kirkman of London, mahogany, walnut and oak furniture, oil paintings, a lawn mower and a mangle.

Joseph Hunter McFerran of J H McFerran & Co, linen manufacturers of Bedford St was resident at the time of the 1901 census, with his wife and two adult children, his son being employed as a linen salesman. The family had one servant, Anne Donaghy from Co Armagh. The house is said to have had 16 rooms at that time. McFerran had moved out of the house with his family by 1902, when W H McFadden, linen yarn merchant, is noted to be resident. The ‘commodious house’ was advertised to let in March 1907 by this time featuring a bathroom with hot and cold water.

The next resident was David Strain (1860-1943), manager of Donegall Place Ulster Bank. Strain was married to a daughter of the Rev Dr George Magill, minister of Cliftonville Presbyterian Church, who lived in the neighbouring house at 22 Elmwood Avenue. David Strain was resident at the time of the 1911 census and lived with his Derry wife Helen, his son Robert William Magill Strain, who later became a doctor, and their general domestic servant, Margaret Stewart from County Down. David Strain was manager of the Donegall Place branch of the Ulster Bank and retired in 1925 after working for the bank for 49 years. He was also a member of the Board of Management of Royal Victoria Hospital and sang in the Royal Philharmonic Society choir. His son, Dr R W M Strain (known as Bill), a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps during WW2, was the historian of the Ulster Medical Society and co-editor of the Ulster Medical Journal. He was also physician to the Belfast Charitable Society at Clifton House, researching and writing a history of the society. He was a Queen’s graduate and a long-serving physician of the Ulster Hospital. The Dr R W M Strain Masonic Charitable Trust continues to give bursaries to students in financial need.

The house was advertised to let in 1913 and at that time contained three large reception rooms, seven bedrooms, a bathroom and a boxroom and had a rear garden.

Two families lived in the house in the subsequent period. Henry Horner Mayne (1867-1951), proprietor of Belfast booksellers Erskine Mayne, moved into the house c1914 and initially shared it with James Fraser, son of James Fraser, muslin manufacturer of Glasgow and Belfast (premises in Nelson Street and Academy Street) and his family. Fraser died in 1923, but his family continued to live at 24, his wife Margaret dying there in 1938. Henry Horner Mayne’s family comprised his wife, Margaret, his sons Alexander Fraser Mayne and Henry Edmund O’Donnell Mayne and his daughter Margaret Elizabeth Honor Mayne. All three children ultimately joined the family business, but all lived and travelled abroad while young. An outbuilding (shown on the large-scale map of 1931) was added in 1921 and the valuation of the house was consequently raised to £51. The outbuilding was constructed ‘for photographic work’, perhaps for developing cine film which was Henry Horner Mayne’s passion. (An outbuilding remains to the rear of the house but may have been rebuilt).

In 1922, while Mayne was a tenant, the house was offered for sale by auction. It contained three receptions, seven bedrooms, bathroom, W C, kitchen, scullery and pantry ‘with excellent garden at rear’. The residence was ‘in beautiful order…very substantially built’ and was ‘eminently suited for a professional or business man’. It appears likely that the Mayne family bought the house at this time as the family are listed as immediate lessors in valuation records of the 1950s (the immediate lessor is named as M E H Mayne, daughter of Henry).

‘Erskine Mayne’ was the name of a book shop, stationery and record shop and purveyor of photographic supplies in Donegall Square East (with branches at various other addresses in the city), a business which was active from 1815 to 1982 and became a Belfast institution. Henry Horner Mayne was the son of William Erskine Mayne (1833-1892) who gave his name to the company but the concern traced its founding to W Erskine Mayne’s father Alexander Smith Mayne who ran the Ulster Religious Tract, Book and Bible Depository in Waring Street (established in 1815). In 1866 W Erskine Mayne took over the depository, which sold mainly religious works, and began to offer books of a general nature, lanterns and lantern slides, children’s toys such as mini steam engines and photographic equipment. On his father’s death in 1891 Henry Horner Mayne took over the running of the family business and enlarged the firm, acquiring premises in Donegall Square West in 1899 and beginning to trade in cinematographic equipment, phonographs and gramophones. Henry Horner Mayne became a pioneer of contact photocopying in the early 1900s, which was used to reproduce engineers’ and architects’ plans such as those by L L Macassey for the Silent Valley reservoir scheme. Mayne was particularly fascinated by cinematography and filmed the arrival of Queen Victoria in Dun Laoghaire in 1900, developing the film in his workroom in Belfast and showing it the same evening in the Empire Theatre. Henry Horner Mayne died in 1951 at the age of 85. The company celebrated their 150-year anniversary in 1965 but went into voluntary liquidation in 1982 and although the Erskine Mayne name survived for some years afterwards was no longer connected with the Mayne family.

Henry Horner Mayne’s daughter Margaret Elizabeth (known as Betty) saw active service during WW2 as a Sergeant in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. The Nursing Yeomanry was founded in 1907 with the aim of providing female nurses to administer first aid on the battlefield to men before they were removed to casualty stations. Betty Mayne went to Rhodesia to visit relatives in the early 1930s and stayed for six years, becoming interested in coffee plantations, and starting a soap works. When war was declared Betty Mayne worked as a cipher operator to the Navy in Kenya with a transfer to Suez in 1942-44. During her leave periods, she travelled through Egypt, Palestine and Syria, subsequently returning to become a manager within the family firm.

In 1935 Henry Horner Mayne appealed the valuation of the house and it was surveyed. At the time, it comprised: on the ground floor: two receptions, cloakroom, kitchen, scullery, pantry, small yard and three small stores, garage and double motor house. First floor: reception, bedroom and bedroom in return. 2nd floor: two bedrooms, bathroom and WC, bedroom in return. Attic: front box room and bedroom and a back lumber room. A plan is given showing the house and rear return and a detached motor house (perhaps a reuse of the former photographic studio) and shed at the rear of the plot.

By 1955, following Henry Horner Mayne’s death, the house had been converted into three self-contained flats. No major structural alterations were carried out, the division consisting of stud partitioning. A series of tenants occupied the flats in the 1950 and 1960s including R H Sloan, Reader in physics at QUB; Anne Crookshank, art historian, at the time the Keeper of Art at Belfast Museum and Art Gallery where she forged relationships and developed knowledge that blossomed into a highly distinguished career and Cynthia Warhurst (later Cynthia Gaskell Brown), who was an archaeologist working as an Assistant Inspector of Ancient Monuments for the Ministry of Finance and at the time the only woman in such a post.

Following a bomb attack on the methodist chaplaincy in University Road in 1971, the semi-detached pair was taken over by the Methodist chaplaincy and the current house became the residence of the chaplain Rev David Turtle. Rev Turtle and his doctor wife lived in Burma between 1953 and 1963, having three children and setting up a hospital. When the country became pro-China in the mid 1960s Rev and Dr Turtle were placed under house arrest and prevented from working, following which they returned to Belfast and Rev Turtle was appointed methodist Dean of Residences at Queen’s in 1965. He remained methodist chaplain until 1988, when he retired, after 23 years chaplaincy work at the university. The present house remains in use, with its neighbour, as the methodist chaplaincy for Queen’s University, and is situated between the Church of Ireland (with whom the methodist chaplaincy has united in recent years) and Catholic chaplaincies.

References:
Primary Sources:
1. PRONI OS/6/1/61/1 – First Edition Ordnance Survey Map (1832-3)
2. PRONI OS/6/1/61/2 – Second Edition Ordnance Survey Map (1858)
3. PRONI OS/6/1/61/3 – Third Edition Ordnance Survey Map (1901-2)
4. PRONI OS/6/1/61/4 – Fourth Edition Ordnance Survey Map (1938)
5. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/D/7 – Annual Revisions (1862-82)
6. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/D/14 – Annual Revisions (1882-96)
7. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/A/36 – Annual Revisions (1897-1905)
8. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/P/3 – Annual Revisions (1906-1915)
9. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/P/7 – Annual Revisions (1916-1930)
10. PRONI VAL/3/D/3/1/P/64 – Third General Revaluation (1933-57)
11. PRONI VAL/7/B/14/19 – Belfast Revaluation 1900
12. PRONI VAL/12/A/7/R/17 – Valuer’s notebook Windsor Ward 1906
13. PRONI VAL/12/A/7/R/48 – Valuer’s notebook Windsor Ward 1921
14. PRONI VAL/12/A/7/R/50 – Valuer’s notebook Windsor Ward 1922
15. Belfast Street Directories 1870-1975
16. Census of Ireland 1901 and 1911
17. Northern Whig, 2nd October 1868
18. Northern Whig, 3rd November 1879
19. PRONI Wills, Rev Robert Knox, died 16th August 1883
20. Belfast Newsletter, 4th November 1890
21. Ballymena Observer, 29th May 1891
22. Northern Whig, 22nd October 1898
23. PRONI Wills, Joseph Hunter McFerran, died 12th July 1904
24. Belfast Newsletter, 27th March 1907
25. Belfast Newsletter, 30th June 1913
26. Belfast Telegraph, 3rd February 1922
27. Belfast Telegraph, 7th April 1943
28. Belfast Newsletter, 24th April 1945
29. Northern Whig, 26th November 1957
30. Belfast Telegraph, 29th May 1963
31. Belfast Newsletter, 8th July 1964
32. Belfast Newsletter, 1st April 1965
33. Belfast Newsletter, 16th October 1965
34. Belfast Telegraph, 14th June 1968
35. Sunday Life, 2nd July 1989
36. Large Scale OS maps (https://shop.centremapslive.co.uk/) 1873, 1884,1902, 1903, 1920, 1931, 1937, 1958, 1970, 1986

Secondary Sources:

37. A history of congregations in the Presbyterian church in Ireland 1610-1982. (1982) Belfast: Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland.
38. Carleton, Samuel Trevor (1967) The Growth of South Belfast. Unpublished MPhil thesis, Queen’s University Belfast
39. Dictionary of Irish Architects www.dia.ie
40. Harron, P (2016) Architects of Ulster: Young & Mackenzie, A Transformational Provincial Practice 1850-1960. Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society
41. Rowan, A J and Brett, C E B (1968) List of Historic Buildings, groups of buildings, buildings of architectural importance in the vicinity of the Queen’s University of Belfast. Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society
42. First Survey Card

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Conjoined three storey pair of buildings executed in brick to designs by Young & Mackenzie. Drawings date from 1879. Dwellings noted to be complete in 1880. Both buildings were taken over by the Methodist Chaplaincy of Queen’s University Belfast in the 1970s.
The present house remains in use, with its neighbour, as the methodist chaplaincy for Queen’s University, and is situated between the Church of Ireland (with whom the methodist chaplaincy has united in recent years) and Catholic chaplaincies.
While it retains some significant features, the loss of historic fabric, compounded by alterations to adjoining No 26, result in its failure to meet the legislative test for listing.