201 Donegall Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Terraced three-storey over basement redbrick townhouse, built c.1820, as part of a terrace of eight similar houses, Nos. 207-215 demolished c.1990. Restored and partially reconstructed c.1993. Square on plan with small front railed basement area and set on a slightly elevated site on the east side of Donegall Street at the junction with Carrick Hill.

Pitched natural slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles and rebuilt redbrick profiled chimneystack to both party walls. Cast-iron guttering on drive-through brackets to projecting brick eaves course and cast-iron downpipe. Redbrick walling laid in Flemish bond. Gauged brick square-headed window openings with flush rendered reveals, sandstone sills and replacement 6/6 timber sash windows throughout.

Front elevation is two windows wide to the upper floors, ground floor windows closely spaced with a gauged brick round-headed door opening to the right. The doorcase comprises a projecting moulded surround with six-panelled timber door flanked by slender timber pilasters to a simple lintel cornice and spoked webbed fanlight set in a scalloped surround. Door opens onto replacement sandstone platform and steps enclosed by replacement iron railings returning to enclose the basement area and set on replacement sandstone plinth wall.

North side elevation abutted by adjoining house No.203 (HB26/50/085B).

The rear is four storeys in height and has staggered fenestration reflecting the rear stairhall with gauged brick square-headed window openings, sandstone sills and replacement 6/6 timber sash windows.

South side elevation abutted by adjoining house No.199, the former Bishop’s Palace, now the Parochial House to St. Patrick’s R.C. Church (HB26/50/077).

Setting:
Set on a slightly elevated site at the north end of Donegall Street with a landscaped raised area buffering the terrace from the street. Each house has a rear yard enclosed by timber fence with a bitmac car park behind.

Roof: Natural slate
RWG : Cast-iron
Walling: Redbrick
Windows: Replacement timber sash

Historical information

Built as a terrace of three, with a further adjoining terrace of five (earlier in date but now gone), the current dwellings were built c.1820 as dwelling houses for the rising mercantile and professional classes of Belfast. Donegall Street, originally named ‘Linenhall Street’ after a brown linen hall that formerly stood near the site of St Anne’s Cathedral, was laid out in the 1750s by the fourth Earl of Donegall. The eye was formerly guided along the street to the poorhouse at the end which closed the vista. (Patton; Brett) During the course of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Donegall Street became a busy commercial centre boasting a number of wholesale textile businesses as well as churches of all three main denominations. The housing built in the area was intended for the new middle classes, and when the current plot was sold to John Milford, a linen draper, a condition of the lease required frontages of at least 30 feet in height. (Brett) The basements of the houses are stone-built but it is thought that the upper floors, of brick, are of somewhat later date. Brett dates the terrace to 1799 but Patton suggests, on evidence uncovered during restoration, that the houses were constructed around 1820. (Patton) The site of the terrace, along a prehistoric raised beach, means that the basement is at ground level to the rear and the houses, although appearing to be three storey are in fact four storeys high. (Hearth website)

The terrace is shown on the first edition OS map of 1832-3 and is listed in the Townland Valuation, where each house is valued at £6.7s.6d. The dwellings comprised a three-storey house, two storey scullery return and a single storey privy and ashpit with a further basement storey and a rear entry to York Lane. Early street directories suggest that the terrace was favoured by textile merchants, with silk mercers and linen/cotton manufacturers resident. As the industrialisation of Belfast rendered the town an increasingly dirty and uncomfortable place to live, these wealthy merchants tended to move out to Malone and to the North Down coast. Bishop Denvir, when living in the neighbouring presbytery, complained of the soot and smuts from the biscuit factory opposite which meant frequent redecoration was necessary. (Valuation records) The nineteenth century saw the terrace taken over by professional people such as doctors, dentists and vets and by the turn into the twentieth-century, by the petty bourgeoisie running shops and employment agencies.

Number 201 (originally numbered 99) appears in the Belfast Newsletter in 1836 when an auction of the furniture was advertised. The list includes a Tomkinson piano forte, an eight day clock and a magazine pistol, and gives a rare glimpse into how the house would have been furnished in its early decades. (Belfast Newsletter) At around this time the house was the residence of Charles Dalton, who was the organist at St George’s Church. (Street Directory) Hugh Graham who was a manufacturer of hats and caps, occupied the house in 1839 and in 1846-7, T Mundell, post office clerk was resident. By 1853 the house was home and surgery to JJ Gallen, Surgeon Dentist, who advertised his services with the question ‘Pray is the fracture of a grinder of less consequence than the abrasion of a finger of the hand of man?’ Gallen could be consulted daily from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon and made natural, mineral and artificial teeth ‘at fair and honourable charges’. (Belfast Newsletter)

At the time of Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64) the house was occupied by James King, veterinary surgeon who leased the property from William Suffern. (Belfast Newsletter) The house and yard were valued at £17 and the rent was £25. The next tenant, Rev F Niemeyer from Hanover gave instruction in German, French and the ancient languages and could receive pupils at his residence. (Belfast Newsletter) In 1863 GFH Robinson of Alexander & Co flour mills was resident, followed by Miss Kane, dress and mantle maker (1880-1887). W J Moran veterinary surgeon, late demonstrator of anatomy at the Royal Veterinary College London, resumed the medical theme of the residence but from 1896 the premises was an employment agency for domestic staff, advertising regularly in the Belfast Newsletter for cooks, kitchen maids, housemaids, nurses, ‘generals’ and ‘country girls’. (Belfast Newsletter) The manager of the agency was Mary J Gingles who lived at the house with her two daughters and her mother. At the time of the 1901 census, there were five servants seeking employment or working nearby who boarded at the house with the Gingles family, the majority women in their twenties from Counties Monaghan, Armagh, Donegal and Down, while one was of Scottish birth. The Gingles family kept their own domestic, an older woman of 50 from County Monaghan. The six-room house was designated second class and Mary Gingles paid a rent of £26. (1901 census) By 1915 the house was again the premises of a dentist, JP Smith and by 1930 a Doctor, John Barron, the house remaining a doctor’s surgery until the late 1960s when it fell vacant and remained so for some years. (Street Directories)
The houses attracted the attention of Hearth in 1985 but in 1990 the terrace of five that adjoined numbers 201-205 was demolished for road widening. The current three dwellings were restored by Hearth in 1991-3, but the rear wall of number 201 collapsed before restoration work began due to decay in the old lintels. A new back wall was erected using modern brick, but reclaimed brick was used as replacements on the front elevations. New railings and stone kerbs were fitted and the doorcases restored with festooned plaster to the reveals and spiderweb fanlights. The current building, number 201 was sold on completion to St Patrick’s church as an annexe to the adjoining presbytery. (http://freespace.virgin.net/hearth.nireland)

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 OS/6/1/61/6 – Sixth Edition OS Map 1931
5. PRONI VAL/1/B/710A Townland Valuation (1828-40)
6. PRONI VAL/2/B/7/3AGriffith’s Valuation (1856-64)
7. PRONI VAL/7/C/9/1 – Belfast Revaluation 1900
8. PRONI VAL/7/B/9/14 – Belfast Revaluation 1900
9. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/C/1-45 Annual Revisions (1863-1930)
10. Street Directories 1839-1995
11. 1901 census
12. Belfast Newsletter 26th April 1836
13. Belfast Newsletter 2nd December 1853
14. Belfast Newsletter 24th April 1861
15. Belfast Newsletter 15th August 1862
16. Belfast Newsletter 18th June 1888
17. Belfast Newsletter 24th November 1896

Secondary Sources

1. Brett, C.E.B. “Buildings of Belfast 1700-1914” Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, revised edition 1985
2. Brett, CEB “Georgian Belfast, 1750-1850 – Maps, Buildings and Trades” Royal Irish Academy, 2004
3. Patton, M “Central Belfast: An Historical Gazetteer” Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1993
4. http://freespace.virgin.net/hearth.nireland - Hearth website

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

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

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Terraced three-storey over basement brick townhouse, built c.1820, as part of a terrace of eight similar houses, Nos. 207-215 demolished c.1990. One of only three houses to survive on the terrace (HB26/50/085B&C), this group is a good example of Belfast’s late Georgian domestic architecture, albeit largely reconstructed. Although compromised by the loss of interior fabric and detailing, they are a significant survival of late Georgian Belfast and their historic links with the mercantile and professional history of the City are of note.

General comments

This record has been renumbered. Formerly all three houses were HB26/50/085.