24 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 a modern two-storey flat-roof return to rear.

Pitched natural slate roof with blue/black angled ridge tiles; rendered chimneystack having clay pots. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods (uPVC to rear). Walling is painted ruled and lined render. Windows are replacement 1/1 timber sliding sash (timber casement to rear).

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

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

The west (rear) elevation has a window to first and ground floor right; abutted at left by a modern flat roofed two-storey return with timber-sheeted door to right enclosing the rear yard. Return comprises a large window to ground floor with a window directly over to first floor; left and right cheeks not viewed.

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

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: Timber
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 five (now twenty four) were, in the High Street house, Agnes McFadden, and in the house fronting onto Bann Street, Samuel Bamber. Subsequent tenants were William Potter (1887) Samuel Potter (1902) Thomas Potter (1904) James Meehan (1902) and Anne Meehan (1904). The 1901 census records the High Street tenant as Ann Potter, a widow from County Armagh who kept house for her two children, her daughter-in-law and her two grandchildren. Her daughter worked as a thread twister at the mill and her son and daughter-in-law were also employed there. Living in the Bann Street house was James Meehan, a carter who lived with his wife and a female lodger who was a linen spinner at the mill. By 1911 the High Street tenant was Thomas James Moore, flax rougher, who lived with his wife and three young children. One of the children born to the couple had not survived. On the Bann Street side lived Anne Meehan, an 80-year-old widow of no profession.

In 1915-16 most of the houses in Bann Street to the rear of High Street were incorporated into the front houses. Some remained, however, and this house and its neighbours up to the end of the terrace remained back to back houses with two sets of tenants until the 1930s. The house on the High Street side was subsequently occupied by Eliza Thompson up to at least 1929, and the Bann Street tenant was Annie McBurney from 1922-29. The Bann Street house had been incorporated into the front dwelling by 1937 and the present house was raised in value to £5 in 1938. By this time it was described as a ‘good type parlour house’ and consisted of a parlour, kitchen, scullery and two bedrooms, the scullery and lavatory being accommodated in a rear extension.

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. PRONI VAL/3/C/4/2 – First General Revaluation (1936-57)
8. PRONI VAL/3/D/4/3/M/3 – First General Revaluation Valuers’ RV Binder(1933-57)
9. 1901 census online
10. 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 end 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.