47 Derryvolgie Avenue

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey four bay detached house of 1884-85 with hipped slated roof and overhanging eaves, built c.1884 on north side of Derryvolgie Avenue, Belfast. Architect unknown. Derryvolgie Avenue runs E-W between Malone and Lisburn Roads, two main arterial routes due south of city centre and No47 is located within the Derryvolgie and Windsor Conservation Area.
‘L’ shape on plan. Main body of the house is square, with advanced two storey bay off NW corner. Single storey flat roofed entrance porch facing east off front elevation. All built in red brick with painted brick projecting plinth (with ventilators to suspended floor) and four blue/black brick string courses. The first and third string course runs between the cills of the windows on ground and first floors, the second, a continuous horizontal line above the flat arches of the ground floor windows, and the fourth running between the upper parts of the first floor windows. Two brick, two stage chimney stacks with red clay pots.

Natural slate roof with black clay ridge tiles. Modern, largely two storey brick extension to rear on footprint of original single storey lean-to scullery and outhouses. Large, 6/6 painted timber single glazed sliding sash windows throughout the three principal elevations (and part of the less formal west elevation) of the original house; all with slender glazing bars and horns. Some historic glass. Projecting stone cills, painted. Windows to the ground floor have flat arches and those to the first floor have segmental arched heads – all arches formed with soldier coursed brick headers.
The original roof which comprised an internal valley over the main section of the house has been altered to form a platform ridge in order to address problems with water ingress.

Materials:
ROOF: Natural slate (replaced)
RWGS: Cast metal, painted
WALLS: Red brick in Flemish bond with blue brick string courses
WINDOWS: Timber framed single glazed multi-paned sliding sashes, unless otherwise described.

North elevation (front)
Eight 6/6 sash windows regularly arranged on top of each other, four to ground floor four to first floor. Small square porch (lit by window to north) has corbelled brick parapet (concealing flat PVC roof behind), and replacement decorative railings. Original four panelled diamond fielded, double leaf, painted timber entrance door (faces east towards drive). Blue/black string course as described above.

East elevation (side to drive)
Six 6/6 windows regularly arranged on top of each other, three to ground floor three to first floor, with two blank window recesses to north-east end (right hand side of the elevation), one to ground floor, one to first floor. Blue/black string course as described above.

South elevation (to rear)
To south-west (left hand side), modern two storey extension in form of traditional ‘return’, built of a slightly pinkier and thinner brick than the main house, with plain gable and clipped eaves. Abutting this, to right hand side, the extension continues as a canted single storey, glazed doors to full height (opening onto small raised terrace), with flat roof and balcony above. Modern fenestration. Main body of the (original) house is visible to south-east (right-hand side), with one new opening to ground floor replicating in all details the 6/6 windows elsewhere. One (original) arch headed window in centre of wall to first floor – note historic glass.

West elevation
Informal arrangement of windows to ground and first floors, including new (to ground floor) 6/3 timber sash window (replicating size of adjacent original) and back door with traditional rectangular overlight, and to first floor, two small windows to far right hand side. Original window openings to ground floor comprise (from left to right) one 6/6 sash, as elsewhere, and two smaller 3/3 timber sashes – and to first floor (from left to right), one 6/6 sash, as elsewhere, one 3/3 sash, as ground floor, and a large multi-paned round headed sash (lighting the stair) with margins and some coloured and etched glass. The side elevation of the modern rear extension is blank. The lower part is built from brick salvaged from the demolition of the original lean-to and outhouses. The upper part in the new thinner brick, the discrepancy in the thickness (to allow the brickwork to tie in) being made up of a layer of slate being added to each mortar joint.

Set back from street with gravelled driveway flanked by planted beds. Red brick wall to front, with modern painted metal railings over and mature hedging behind. Electric gates to driveway match railings. Further gravelled area immediately next to rear patio and remainder of garden is lawned, with mature planting and box parterre. Part of garden to west appears to have been sold off and is now occupied by a modern house. Timber hit and miss fencing to west and south boundaries at rear garden, and east boundary retains some high basalt rubblestone walling with chamfered brick below rounded terracotta cap.

Historical information

Derryvolgie Avenue takes its name from ‘Derrievolgie House’ the large Italianate dwelling (now a crèche) at the south-eastern end of the street. Built in 1856-58 (to a design by Thomas Jackson for Cranston J. Gregg), it was one of a number of middle-sized gentrified dwellings built along the Malone ridge in the mid-19th century, largely by Belfast’s merchant and professional classes wishing to the escape the increasingly commercialised and industrialised town centre for the semi-rural surrounds to the south. These dwellings were sited on the long strip farm plots (probably established in the early 1600s) which stretched down from the ridge itself westwards to the lower ground of the Bog Meadows. In first half of the 19th century the integrity of these was compromised by the building of the new Lisburn Road (1816-19) and the Ulster Railway (1837-39), events which coupled with the willingness of the cash-strapped Donegall estate to sell off its assets, opened the area for development. Up until c.1860 this development largely took the form the construction of relatively large single properties individually set within the bounds of the former plots, utilising the former as small ‘demesnes’, many complete with gate lodges along the Malone and Lisburn Roads. In the decades following, however, the exodus from the town centre intensified and these gardens themselves were carved up. Thus, by the end of the century much of the area had become suburbanised, with the boundary lines of the old farms themselves laid out as streets lined with a mixture of detached and semi-detached housing with terraces later appearing on those streets closer to the northern end of the ridge.

No.47 This house (originally known as ‘Lancedean’) is first shown on the OS town plan of 1883-84 and recorded as an annotation in the valuation book in for the first time in 1885, newspaper notices suggesting it was not finished until that year. The house was built for Jackson H. Graham, a linen merchant, but the identity of the architect is not known.

Mr Graham seems to have died c.1898 and a year or two later the lease was taken up by John McCaughey J.P., another linen merchant. In the 1901 census Mr. McCaughey (who served as High Sheriff of Belfast in 1908) is noted as living there with his wife, Letitia Christina, their six children, a governess and domestic servant, with the house a 1st class dwelling with the family occupying 16 rooms; he was still there in 1911, along with four children and two servants. John McCaughey died in 1937 and by 1943 Sydney H. Jackson, a chartered accountant is listed as resident. By 1951 the property had been divided into four flats and stayed as such into the 1960s. It had returned to single occupation by 1967, with Mrs. Beatrice S. Jeffrey in residence in that year. By 1979 Dr. Gregg Doran had become the occupant, by which time the property seems to have also been acting as the QUB Department of Botany. It is now a private dwelling once again.

The large rear extension was added c.2013.

References – Primary sources
1 PRONI VAL12B/43D/14, 1882-96
2 PRONI OS8/30/3/53 OS town plan of Belfast, 1883-84
3 ‘Belfast and Province of Ulster Street Directory’, (Belfast News-Letter, Belfast), various dates from 1884 to 1996
4 Northern Whig, 3 February, 4 April 1885
5 PRONI OS8/30/4/53 OS town plan of Belfast, 1896
6 PRONI VAL12B/43DA/36, 1897-1905
7 PRONI VAL7B/14/15 valuation of Belfast, 1900
8 Census of Ireland, 1901, 1911 [online]
9 PRONI OS8/30/5/49 OS town plan of Belfast, 1903
10 PRONI VAL12B/43P/3, 1906-15
11 PRONI VAL12B/43P/7, 1916-30
13 OS maps various sheets at 1:1250/2500 scale, 1920-85 [online]
14 ‘Northern Whig’, 16 February 1937

Secondary sources
1 Carleton, S.T., ‘The growth of South Belfast’, (unpublished QUB MA thesis), 1967
2 Rowan, A.J. and Brett, C.E.B., ‘Historic Buildings...Queens University of Belfast’, (UAHS, 1968), p.42
3 Larmour, Paul, ‘The Architectural Heritage of Malone & Stranmillis’, (UAHS, 1991), pp.56-59

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

S. Authenticity
X. Local Interest
R. Age

Evaluation

Two storey four bay detached house of 1884-85 with hipped slated roof and overhanging eaves, built c.1884 on north side of Derryvolgie Avenue, Belfast. Architect unknown. Red brick with blue brick string courses and formally arranged multi-paned windows combine to give a railway station aesthetic which is distinctive within the Derryvolgie and Windsor Conservation Area. Originally square on plan with projecting bay to NW, a modern extension to the rear added c.2013 falls within the footprint of the former scullery and outhouse. The house is very well proportioned and largely intact inside, with historic joinery and plasterwork amongst other features of note. The setting is much enhanced by mature planting and box parterre to the rear garden and a broad stone entrance step to the corner entrance porch further augments its character.