19 Ann Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A two-bay two-storey mid-terrace house, built c.1840 and located east of Gilford Mill (HB17/01/020A), north of Gilford town centre. Square on plan with modern two-storey flat-roof return to rear.

Pitched natural slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles; rendered chimneystack having clay pots. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods (uPVC to rear). Walling is painted ruled and lined render. Windows are replacement uPVC with projecting masonry sills.

The principal elevation faces east; window to centre at first floor; half-panelled timber door with square-headed overlight to ground floor right and window at left.

The south elevation is abutted by adjoining building (HB19/01/021R).

The west (rear) elevation has a window to first floor right; abutted at left by a modern two-storey return with metal door to right enclosing the rear yard. Return comprises a window to each floor; left and right cheeks not viewed.

The north elevation is abutted by adjoining building (HB19/01/021T).

Setting

Situated on the main road through Gilford, forming part of a terrace of 25 dwellings on Ann Street (excluding the gatelodge No.1 Ann Street). Vehicular access to rear. Bounded to mill site by mature trees.

Roof: Natural slate
Walling: Render
Windows: uPVC
RWG: Cast iron / uPVC

Historical information

The current house is one of a terrace of former back-to-back housing built by the proprietors of the adjacent linen thread spinning mill, a hugely successful business in its day which was largely responsible for the growth and prosperity of Gilford in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The terrace appears to be among the earliest housing built by the company, originally known as Dunbar and Thompson and later trading as Dunbar McMaster & Co Ltd. The houses were originally constructed as two (back-to-back) rows - numbers 9 to 26 opened onto High Street and to the rear of these houses, sharing their back wall, was another row called Bann Street, which opened towards the linen mill. The houses to the rear were for the most part incorporated into the front houses in 1915-16, although six of them remained until the 1930s. A view of the mill said to date from c.1841, shortly after its completion, shows the rear of the terrace as it then appeared and the two rows of houses are shown on the second edition OS map of 1858, captioned ‘High Street’ and ‘Bann St[reet]’. (Logan; Bassett; Cairns)

Hugh Dunbar was the descendant of a linen family, his grandfather having leased a property at Huntley from the Whyte’s of Loughbrickland, where Hugh was manufacturing thread and his hand-loom weavers produced linen cloth. In 1834 the competition from mill-spun yarns, produced by the new wet-spinning process was such that Dunbar was compelled to start his own spinning mill or go out of business. Dunbar chose Gilford as the centre of his new enterprise and entered into partnership with William Agnew Stewart and Robert Thompson, in order to raise the necessary funds. Land was obtained from Hugh Law of Woodbank to build the mill, and the tail race ran through the land of James Uprichard of Bannvale. The spinning mill opened in 1839 as Dunbar and Thompson, Stewart having died in 1837. It was an immediate success and attracted large numbers of workers to the town. Hugh Dunbar, like many of his ilk, took his duties as an employer seriously and the mill provided a structure of social welfare support, such as a medical attendant and a school. Dunbar began building houses for his workforce almost immediately, as the town began an extremely rapid growth in population following the opening of the mill. Between 1841 and 1851 the population more than quadrupled, from 643 to 2,814. By 1870 the mill was employing over 2,000 workers and built 200 houses between 1836 and 1862. All the houses owned by the mill were inspected monthly by the firm’s owners, annually lime-washed, painted and repaired at the firm’s expense. (Logan; Cairns)

The back-to-back houses in Gilford have been described as ‘the most basic units available, having only two rooms with single windows at each floor they would have provided rather cramped living space for more than four occupants. The lack of rear doors and windows and the resultant reduction in ventilation was probably less critical in an open site which allowed unlimited circulation of fresh air. They were adequate for single occupation or smaller family units and would have been a considerable improvement on the poorer type of rural dwellings.” (Logan) The houses were often occupied by single people and couples without children but it was not uncommon for these two room dwellings to be home to a family of four or more. The valuation records and census shows that there was considerable mobility within the terrace, with many tenants living at two or more different addresses over the years.

The houses are first shown on the second edition map of 1858 and are listed in Griffith’s Valuation of 1863 as the property of Dunbar McMaster & Co. The High Street houses are all valued at £2.10s and were two storeys, 15 feet long and 12 feet wide. They were rated ‘deteriorated by age and not in good repair’, indicating that they had been standing for some time at this stage. The houses to the rear in Bann Street were valued at £2.5s, although they were the same size as the houses in High Street. The first tenants to be noted at number twenty (now nineteen) were John Harrison at the High Street side and Margaret Goodgood in the house fronting onto Bann Street. Subsequent tenants were Catherine McKeown (1902) Lizzie Parker (1902) and Lucinda Bains (1903).

At the time of the 1901 census, the occupier of the High Street house was Catherine McKeown, a 74-year-old widow who worked at the mill. In the house to the rear on Bann Street lived Lucinda Bains, an unmarried woman who worked as a winder at the mill. Catherine McKeown continued to occupy the house at the time of the 1911 census, but had been able to retire by this time, perhaps benefitting from the recent introduction of the old-age pension. In the house fronting onto Bann Street in 1991 lived John Houy, a linen bleacher in the mill with his wife who was a sweeper in the mill and their two children, 11 and 4. Another child born to the couple had unfortunately not survived.

In 1916 the house to the rear fronting onto Bann Street was incorporated into the front house and the High Street dwelling was revalued at £4.10s with a rent of 3s.3d a week.

In 1879, following the imposition of a very high import tax on linen thread in the United States, Hugh Dunbar McMaster established a mill in Greenwich Village New York. Workers and machinery were brought over from Ireland and Hugh’s brother John was installed as manager. The emigration of workers from Gilford had a very significant effect on the population, which halved between 1871 and 1881 and many of the initial occupants of the current houses must have been part of this emigration. The company nonetheless continued to thrive in Gilford for some years and had a world-wide reputation, the British Trade Journal of 1890 reporting that the firm exported “twine for salmon fishing to British Columbia, carpet threads, book-binder’s threads, extra strong threads for leather and thick cloths and fine threads for the sewing-machinist and lace maker...to the United States, South and Central America, Brazil, Australia and the rest of the British Colonies”. The owners retained a paternalistic interest in their workers and the life of the town, which revolved around the mill through much of the twentieth century. However, a decline in the Ulster linen industry eventually led to the mill’s closure in the early 1980’s. (Logan; Cairns)

The building has been retained in use as a dwelling.

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/3/26/1 First Edition OS Map 1834
2. PRONI OS/6/3/26/2 Second Edition OS map 1858
3. PRONI OS/6/3/26/3 Third Edition OS Map 1901-2
4. PRONI OS/6/3/26/4 Fourth Edition OS Map 1920-21
5. PRONI VAL/2/B/3/48E Griffiths Valuation (1856-64)
6. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/25A-H Annual Revisions (1864-1930)
7. 1901 census online
8. 1911 census online

Secondary Sources

1. Bassett, G H “County Down One Hundred Years Ago: A Guide and Directory 1886” Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1988
2. Cairns, A “The Church and Community of St John the Evangelist Gilford, Sesquicentennial 1850-2000” Lurgan: Inglewood
Press, 2002
3. Graham, F “The History of Gilford Presbyterian Church and other articles of local interest” 2006
4. Logan, R A “A Window on the Past, A History of Gilford County Down” Banbridge Chronicle, (n.d.)
5. Rankin, K “The Linen Houses of the Bann Valley, The story of their families” Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2007

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A two-bay two-storey mid-terrace house, built c.1850 and located east of Gilford Mill (HB17/01/020). Part of a terrace of eighteen houses, built c.1840 located north of Gilford centre. Formerly a mill workers complex of back-to-back houses, altered over the years and with little historic fabric now remaining. The buildings are of interest primarily due to their relationship with Gilford mill, and as an example of mill workers houses in the town. While of local interest, it is not among the best examples of the type and has been compromised by the extensive alterations that have reduced its architectural and historic interest. It is no longer of special interest.