McMaster Street History
What is special about McMaster Street?
McMaster Street has been listed for its historical and architectural
interest as one of the last surviving complete terraces of late
Victorian workers' dwellings in East Belfast. A visitor to Belfast
as late as 1960 would have found many of these "wee palaces"
of coloured brickwork, spruce and neatly kept, all over the city,
and carried away the image of a Belfast full of the tight urban
communities which they represented. Unfortunately, redevelopment
and new roads have progressively wiped out many such streets.
McMaster Street was developed by John McMaster and designed for
him by J Frazer & Sons in 1898-99. Nos.2-14 and the odd-numbered
side of the street had been developed by 1901, but it was not
till 1908 that the remaining houses were erected. Because the
land McMaster owned was not rectangular, the yards at the back
of the even numbered houses are much wider at the Newtownards
Road end. The houses at that end of the street are also taller,
with attic bedrooms, and would obviously have commanded a higher
rent.
How were the houses lived in originally?
The McMaster Street houses were typical "two-up two-down"
terraced houses. Such houses would be either "Kitchen"
houses or "Parlour" houses, the former having a kitchen
and a bedroom on the ground floor. McMaster Street was of the
better quality Parlour type with the front ground floor room being
a Parlour reserved for good occasions, and the back room the Kitchen
where food was cooked and eaten and much of the everyday life
of the house took place. Beyond that was a single-storey return
containing the Scullery or Working Kitchen with the jaw-box sink
and a timber worktop. There would have been a larder and a meat-safe
where perishable food would be kept cool and ventilated. In the
tiled yard at the back there was an outside toilet and a coal
house.
The house did not originally have a bathroom; the family would
have filled a portable tin bath in the Kitchen with hot water
drawn off the range, or gone to the nearby Templemore Avenue Baths.
The two bedrooms upstairs might have housed quite a large family,
the parents probably in the front room, perhaps with a baby, and
older children sharing a bed in the back room. It would have been
not uncommon for a family of five or six children to be brought
up in a house like this. Since McMaster Street was built towards
the end of Belfast's rapid development phase in the 19th century,
the houses were built to a good standard with wide streets and
back entries, running water and flush toilets.
The McMaster Street families were skilled artisans, able to afford
the comparatively high rent of the houses. In 1909 the trades
represented in the street included moulder, engineer, rivetter,
engineer, fitter, plater, rivetter, brassfinisher, painter, joiner,
caulker, craneman, cabinetmaker, blacksmith, boatman, upholsterer
and fireman, all of whom could have been employed in the shipyards.
For thirty years from 1913, no.22 was occupied by a brass finisher
named William Hopkins. In 1947 James Harvey appears to have returned
from the war and taken up residence here, first as a labourer,
then as a commissionaire, and finally a bank messenger till his
retirement in the mid 1960s. The house was vacant from about 1988.
No.42 was originally occupied by a shopkeeper called James McKibben.
A fitter called R H Doherty had moved in by 1911 and remained
there till the early thirties. For nearly thirty years from 1941
T W Logan, a compositor, lived here, till he was succeeded by
Mrs Cushley in 1969.
This sort of information can be obtained
from street directories, and is often fascinating. However in
this case we were delighted when Patricia Massey, a former occupant
of no.42, got in touch with us, and her recollections and family
photographs brought the dry facts above into life. She was Mr
Logan's daughter, and you can read about her story by clicking
here.
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