29 Malone Place

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A two-storey, two-bay Victorian end of terrace dwelling built c.1860, square-plan with two-storey rear return. Located off the Lisburn Road, adjacent to Sandy Row approximately 1 mile south of Belfast city centre.

Pitched slate roof with clay ridge tiles; replacement galvanised steel rainwater goods; red-brick chimney; clay pots; roof-light to the rear pitch. Red-brick walling laid to Flemish bond; projected smooth rendered plinth-course; yellow-brick eaves courses; vermiculated quoins. 1/1 double glazed timber sliding-sash windows; with horns; painted masonry cills; yellow brick flat arches. Replacement timber door with over light; flanked by panelled pilasters rising to a pair foliated consoles supporting moulded canopy; terrazzo step.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged. The ground floor comprises a door to the left with a single window to the right. Two first floor windows. Quoins to the left.

The left gable is asymmetrically arranged. Ruled-and-lined rendered; quoins to the right. Narrow ground and first floor windows right of centre.

The rear elevation is asymmetrically arranged. Single ground and first floor windows to the right. The left bay is abutted by a replacement red brick two-storey return with lower eaves and ridge levels.

The right gable is abutted by 27 Malone Place (HB26/29/003N).

Setting:

The terrace faces directly on to a narrow street, the opposite side comprises a rubble masonry wall bounding the embankment to the railway, and a small park enclosed by gated railings. On the opposing side of the Lisburn Road is the University Road Moravian Church (HB26/28/004). The former Maternity Hospital is located to the west with a large modern apartment block to the north.

Roofing: Natural slate
Walling: Red/yellow-brick, Flemish bond
Windows: Double glazed timber sliding sash
RWG: Galvanised replacement

Historical information

The terrace was built in at least two phases, the earlier part dating from the late 1840s and further houses being added in the early 1860s. The site, at the bottom of Sandy Row, lay well outside the urban area of Belfast until the 1850s, Sandy Row probably following a route that was laid down in medieval times. (Brett) On the first edition OS map of 1832-3 a small structure is shown on the site, perhaps associated with the Malone turnpike which was situated at this junction, but the area is otherwise little developed, consisting mostly of housing associated with the major routes into Belfast. Industrial activity gradually spread westwards and, at the time the terrace was built, it was situated among a mixed use landscape of factories, brick fields, housing and some larger mansions, together with much open ground. The Union Work House and Fever Hospital dating from 1841 and 1849, was, however, the most prominent structure of the area and several of the inhabitants of Malone Place were employed there at one time or another.

Brett’s annotations of the 1850 Hodges and Smith map on which the terrace makes its first appearance show that the site belonged from 1798 to a ‘gentleman’ named William Irvine and was purchased in 1826, together with the neighbouring plot by Arthur Gaffikin, butcher and property developer, who later went on to become the proprietor of a linen business. (Brett) Gaffikin is memorialised in the name of ‘Gaffikin Street’ which runs to the rear of Malone Place. The terrace is not listed in the street directory of 1846-7 but appears in the subsequent 1850 edition giving a likely construction date of the late 1840s for numbers 9 to 19. (Street Directories)

The terrace was built to the rear of a larger house called Malone Cottage which faces onto Sandy Row (this part of the street was then known as Malone Road). It is possible that Malone Cottage and Malone Terrace were built together as a development by Arthur Gaffikin and were then sold on or that the land was sold by him as building plots. Sarah Warnock is listed as the landlady in Griffith’s Valuation of 1860 where the houses are valued at £10 and dimensions are given. A succession of tenants occupied the dwellings and they were advertised in the Belfast Newsletter in 1857 in the following terms, ‘To let, neat, well-finished houses in Malone Place, adjoining the Post Office, containing Parlour, Kitchen, Three Bedrooms with Gas and Water at the greatly reduced rent of £11’. (Griffith’s Valuation; Belfast Newsletter)

Numbers 21 to 29 were built between 1860 and 1863, by property developer Moses Tate. They were valued slightly higher than the first houses to be built, at £11 and number 29 at £12, but these valuations were later (1888) reduced to £10 and £11. The Belfast Newsletter of 1862 notes that ‘a number of respectable houses have lately been built on the above Ground and others are in progress of erection.’ Further building land in the area was offered by Arthur Gaffikin and a further four, slightly larger, houses were built on the far side of Blondin Street between 1870 and 1877. These houses were subsequently taken over as the Midnight Mission Rescue Home, a refuge for ‘fallen’ women of the area. Eventually unmarried mothers were catered for in the home and the houses became a maternity hospital. The four dwellings were demolished in 1924 and a new ‘Rescue and Maternity Home’ built on the site to designs by William Godfrey Ferguson. In 1973 ‘Malone Place Hospital’ became absorbed by the Jubilee Maternity Hospital but was no longer used by maternity services after 1981, although it has remained the property of the Health Trust. (Annual Revisions; Ulster Medical Journal)

The first valuation map to show the terrace (c1860) shows ornamental railings and a step to the front of each of the original six houses. Each of the houses has a rear return and outbuildings in the yard. A subsequent edition (c1860-1895) shows a boundary post and watering trough at the junction with the Lisburn Road and a tramline running behind the terrace in Napier Street which provided employment for some of the residents of Malone Place. The houses appear to have been home to people of varying social standing, mostly of the skilled manual, clerk and supervisory classes. Many skills and trades are represented but a large number of the residents were employed in the textile industry in some form, either in the manufacture of cloth or as drapers, tailors or other ancillary trades. There are occasional hints in the Belfast Newsletter that inhabitants of the terrace were sometimes involved in the seamier side of Belfast life as the population of the city began to grow. On 1867 Jane Crosbey of number 17 Malone Place was summonsed to appear in court on a charge of having been disorderly in the public street, information having been received by magistrates ‘as to the character of the house she kept’. (Belfast Newsletter) In October and November 1876 a story ran in the Newsletter over several weeks when a boarder at number 23 was accused of stealing a top coat, umbrella, watch and chain and £1.10s from a man staying the night in the dwelling. The story culminated in a courtroom speech by the defendant followed by an angry riposte from his wife, the attention given to this story indicating perhaps how rare such a crime was in mid Victorian Belfast. (Belfast Newsletter) However, by the time that the 1901 and 1911 censuses allow us a fuller picture of the inhabitants, most of the houses were occupied by large extended families of the respectable, skilled working classes, rarely able to afford a servant, and where there are teenage children, these are often involved in bringing a wage to the household.

The houses in the terrace were frequently renumbered during the latter decades of the nineteenth century and it is therefore at times difficult to pinpoint the residents of individual houses. However, as far as can be determined number 29 was first occupied in 1863/4 by John Hunter, salesman at the Belfast Union Workhouse and Hospital and William Boyce, clerk and returning officer. Subsequent occupants were, Mrs Hogg (1865) and Samuel Hood, 1876-7). Then followed a very long period of occupancy by the Harper family, beginning with James Harper, warehouseman in 1884. Matthew Harper had taken over the house by 1889 and is variously described as a storeman and overlooker. In the 1901 census he calls himself a yarn store worker. He is living with his wife and daughter who is a dressmaker and a boarder who is a handkerchief stitcher. Visiting them is an English woman of 33 who is working as a ward mistress, perhaps in the nearby maternity hospital. In the 1911 census we find Mary Jane Harper, widow, living with her daughter, a dressmaker, and two boarders, a 21 year old from Ballykeel who is also a dressmaker and a 54 year old male musician from England. (Street Directories; 1901/1911 census) The house remains in use as a domestic dwelling.

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/1/61/1 – First Edition OS Map 1832-3
2. PRONI OS/6/1/61/3 – Third Edition OS Map 1858
3. PRONI OS/6/1/61/4 – Fourth Edition OS Map 1901-2
4. PRONI VAL/2/B/7/4/H – Griffith’s Valuation (1860)
5. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/D/1-22 – Annual Revisions (1862-1930)
6. Belfast Newsletter, 11th March 1857
7. Belfast Newsletter 26th February 1862
8. Belfast Newsletter 11th October 1867
9. Belfast Newsletter 5th October 1876
10. Belfast Newsletter 8th November 1876
11. Belfast Street Directories (1846-1910)
12. 1901 census online
13. 1911 census online
14. Ulster Medical Journal, Vol 55, No 1 pp47-8, April 1986

Secondary Sources

1. Brett, C.E.B., Gillespie, R. and Maguire W.A. “Georgian Belfast, 1750-1850, Maps Buildings and Trades” Dublin and Belfast: Royal Irish Academy and Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society, 2004

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
X. Local Interest
S. Authenticity

Evaluation

A two-storey, two-bay Victorian end-terrace dwelling built c.1860. Forming part of the latter half of the terrace, the exterior of the house has retained its essential original proportions and character although has lost some historic features of interest. Internally, some alterations to the interior detailing has resulting in the loss to some of the orignal fabric. However, the overall intact external appearance of the terrace ensures that it is a good surviving example of housing of this type. Number 29 adds significant value to the group as a whole, makes a positive architectural contribution to the character of the area.