92 BALLYGARVEY ROAD

The Department's description

Historical information

The date panels to the gables suggest this short terrace was built in 1865. This is confirmed by evidence in the annual valuation revision notebooks which specifically mention four new houses being built in this general area in this year.

The terrace was built by Andrew Currell, undoubtedly as workers’ houses for his large beetling mill and bleach works to the south. This mill had been in operation since before 1832, the 1836 valuation describing a large (and relatively old) complex consisting of long two and single storey buildings including an engine house, workshop and yarn loft, bleach house, dye house and starch house, with the contemporary OS memoirs stating that ‘a great quantity of the Union Cloth is manufactured as well as bleached…[with]…about 60 weavers employed, who work at their own houses’. The Currells themselves lived at ‘Ballygarvey’ a large two storey house just to the north of the mill, (on the opposite side of the road from the terrace), which the aforementioned valuation suggests may have been built c.1820-30. This house is still standing, albeit in somewhat enlarged form.

The 1832 OS map shows a large L-shaped building whose southern portion appears to have occupied part of the site of the present terrace, with a long rectangular building just to the east of this. It is difficult to ascertain what this grouping was used for at this stage. It is likely that it contained the ‘workman’s dwelling’, stables and ‘offices’, mentioned in the 1836 valuation. By 1857 the grouping had been extended with a portion added to the north end of the block to the east (giving it an L-shape also). The valuation notebook of 1859 indicates that by this point the grouping contained some small dwellings, the notebook itself providing a small thumbnail sketch which suggests that the eastern portion was largely made up of small houses, whilst the portion which occupied the site of today’s terrace contained two more houses. It is difficult to say whether the latter two houses were completely cleared away in 1865 when the present grouping appeared, the asymmetric arrangement of the terrace could indicate that earlier structures were simply remodelled, however, against this it has to be said that the valuation revision book specifically mentions four ‘new’ houses, and the terrace itself is stretches further to the east than the structure shown on the 1857 map. Thus whilst some of the fabric of the earlier building may have been incorporated into the new terrace, no.92, to the east end, appears to be wholly new build.

The relatively large size of the dwellings comprising the terrace suggests that they originally housed higher status employees. No.92, as the largest property within the grouping itself, may have been reserved for the highest status (or most senior) member of the whole group, perhaps an overseer or foreman of some kind. The names of the tenants listed in 1865 are, John Miller, Alexander Stewart, James Stewart and Hugh Bowens.

In 1892 or 1893, the mill was damaged in a fire, the valuation entry for the later year telling us that it was ‘burned and gutted [with] floors partly gone [and] machinery partly gone’. Some time prior to 1901 the mill (and the worker’s houses) was acquired by the Raceview Woollen Mill firm belonging to John Killen Wilson, with the Wilson family occupying ‘Ballygarvey’ itself. The complex itself appears to have continued as a mill until the 1980s. The mill workers’ houses are now private dwellings.

References- Primary sources
1 ‘Pigot’s directory…’ (Manchester, 1824) [This directory lists John Daniel Currell (under ‘linen merchants and registered bleachers’) as living at Kildrum, perhaps suggesting that he had no connection with the Ballygarvey mill at this point- or that it had not yet been built.]
2 PRONI OS/6/1/33/1 OS map, Co Antrim sh 33, 1832
3 PRONI VAL/1B/177 First valuation, Parish of Kirkinriola, c.1836
4 OS Memoirs of Ireland…vol.23, Co Antrim VIII, ed Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), c.1836
5 Belfast and Province of Ulster directory (Belfast, 1852- )
6 PRONI OS/6/1/33/2 OS map, Co Antrim sh 33, 1857
7 PRONI VAL/2B/66a Second valuation notebook, Parish of Kirkinriola, c.1859
8 PRONI VAL/12B/3/19a-c Annual revaluation revision books, Parish of Kirkinriola, 1864-c.1908
9 PRONI D.1933 Records of J.K. Wilson & Co. (Raceview Woollen Mills), 1890-1947
10 PRONI OS/6/1/33/3 OS map, Co Antrim, sh 33, 1901-02