Three Victorian houses in Belfast’s university area have been proposed for listing.
The Department for Communities’ Historic Environment Division (HED) occasionally recommends properties for listing to local councils.
Once listed, these buildings have a degree of protection, such as from demolition or major alteration, unless prior approval is granted.
There are currently around 9,000 listed buildings across Northern Ireland.
A second survey of all of NI’s building stock is currently underway, to update and improve on the first list of buildings of special architectural or historic interest that began in 1974.
Ahead of next week’s meeting of Belfast City Council’s planning committee, the HED has proposed three buildings in the city for listed status.
Two of the properties make up a row of late Victorian redbrick terraced houses on University Street.
The homes have bay windows and external red sandstone dressings. Internally, the houses feature decorative plasterwork.
The pair of properties were constructed between 1890 and 1893 to designs by renowned Belfast architect William J Fennell, a distinguished designer of domestic dwellings, churches and schools.
Some of Fennell’s most well-known works in Belfast include Cooke Centenary Church, the Water Commissioner’s Office and the Mater Hospital.
He also designed All Saints Church, also on University Street. Internally, original cornices and joinery have survived, while carved above each front door is a monogram and crest linking the properties to their original owner and builder, William Gabbey.
One of the houses on University Street
The third building proposed for listing is a Victorian villa in Wellington Park, which is designed in a Gothic Revival style and retains its original canted bay windows and decorative brickwork. Much of the interior also survives.
The plan of the house is largely intact, except for a portion of the rear which once contained a store and a bathroom.
“High ceilings to the main rooms of the front part of the house were a selling point when the house was built,” HED noted.
“The building is generally enhanced by its setting, within a tree-lined avenue, terraced with substantial double-fronted villas of a similar period (replacement gate and piers were added to the front in 2011).
“The association of the house with Samuel Hogg, notable Shankill Road grocer, and the Montgomery family, who were involved in the local linen trade, adds to the building’s local interest.”
One of the houses on University Street
Samuel Hogg ran The People’s Tea and Coffee House on the Shankill Road in the early 1900s. A photographic negative of staff in front of the premises dating back to around 1920 is held in a National Museums NI collection.
Listed buildings are given different grades, from A to B1 and B2.
The pair of buildings on University Street are proposed to be B1, while the Wellington Park house is B2.
B1 and B2 are considered special buildings of local importance or good examples of the style of the period.
Some degree of alteration or imperfection is acceptable for B1 and B2 listed buildings.