24 Meeting Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A three-storey two-bay terraced Georgian house, built c.1830 and located to the south side of Meeting Street in Dromore town centre. Rectangular plan with two-storey gabled return to rear (angled).

Pitched natural slate roof with angled ridge tiles and rendered chimneystack. Mainly cast-iron half-round rainwater goods. Walling is smooth render with banded rustication to ground floor and raised quoins to upper floors. Windows are 3/6 timber-framed sliding sash with horns and projecting sills to second floor; 6/6 with horns to first floor in moulded architraves and boarded to ground floor with projecting sills. Timber-framed casements to rear return.

The principal elevation faces northeast and is three openings wide at each floor. To ground floor right is an elliptical-headed doorcase in moulded surround, comprising recessed four-panelled timber door flanked by Doric columns and surmounted by plain canopy and segmental-headed transom light. Geometric tiled threshold.

The southeast elevation is abutted by adjoining building (HB17/15/033B).

The southwest (rear) elevation projects slightly to left; abutted to centre by the two-storey gabled return which is angled from mid-section. Two windows to second floor and a window to first floor right (without glazing). Return has a number of timber casement windows to first floor and is boarded to ground floor.

Setting

Street-fronted with yard to rear accessed via carriage-arch entrance to neighbouring building.

Roof: Natural slate
Walling: render
Windows: Timber
RWG: Cast-iron

Historical information

No. 24 Meeting Street, one of a pair of three-storey townhouses (the other being No. 26 Meeting Street – HB17/15/033B) was constructed in the early-to-mid-19th century. It is not certain when the current houses were constructed, but they are late Georgian in appearance; two buildings occupying the current site of the properties can be seen on the Townland Valuation town plan of Dromore in c. 1830, the town plan records that No. 24 Meeting Street did not possess its two-storey rear return at that time. In the 1830s the Townland Valuation of Drumbroneth noted that No. 24 Meeting Street was initially valued at £4 4s. and was occupied by a Mr. Thomas Johnston.

Between c. 1830 and 1861 the value of No. 24 Meeting Street rose to £9 by Griffith’s Valuation (1861); the value of the adjoining No. 26 was also increased at the same time; this valuation increase was likely due to the reconstruction or modification of the two buildings from c. 1830. It is possible that the increase in value may have been due to the construction of No. 24’s two-storey rear return; however No. 26 Meeting Street, which also doubled in value, does not possess additional outbuildings and occupies the same layout of its c. 1830 predecessor making this theory unlikely. It is therefore probable that nos 24 and 26 Meeting Street were constructed (or modified) between c. 1830 and 1861. The presence of Victorian features on the Georgian-style houses, such as their window-mouldings, make the case more likely that nos 24-26 Meeting Street were constructed after 1830 and are representative examples of the transitional architectural period between Georgian formalism and Victorian expressionism.

By 1861 No. 24 Meeting Street had come into the possession of a Mr. Hugh Frazer, who was employed as a carpenter and had previously resided at the adjoining dwelling in the 1830s (Ulster Town Directories). Frazer let the property from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners at a time when the Established Church was the largest landowning body in Ireland. Hugh Frazer continued to reside at No. 24 Meeting Street until his death in 1876; Frazer’s Will notes that he was employed as a cabinet maker (PRONI Wills).

Upon Hugh Frazer’s death No. 24 Meeting Street passed into the possession of Adam Watson, a grocer and provisions merchant who later purchased the house outright (1877 Ulster Town Directory). Watson only briefly resided at Meeting Street and was replaced by 1883 by a Mr. Robert Humphries. Humphries vacated the house in 1893 and over the next decade the house continued to be sporadically and briefly occupied by a number of tenants. In 1901 No. 24 Meeting Street was home to Francis Preston (59, Episcopalian), a local linen merchant, and his family; the census building return for that year described the house as a 2nd class dwelling that consisted of seven rooms. By 1911 the former tenant Adam Watson had purchased the property outright and leased No. 24 Meeting Street to a Mr. Hugh Watson who was employed in the local post office (1910 Ulster Town Directory). The Watson family continued to reside at No. 24 Meeting Street until at least the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930.

The two-storey return to the rear of No. 24 Meeting Street is not contemporary with the construction of the house in the early-to-mid-19th century but was likely constructed in the late 19th-century; the return is depicted on an Annual Revision town plan of Dromore dated 1906-c. 1935.

In 1969 Brett described Meeting Street as ‘one of the best places left in Ulster to catch the flavour of the late 18th or early 19th century outskirts of a small textile town’ and nos 24-26 Meeting Street in particular as ‘a good pair of larger houses, three-storey, one of two bays [No. 26] and one of three [No. 24], with glazing bars complete, of well painted stucco, the ground floor rusticated. No. 24 has an arched doorcase with Tuscan columns’ (Brett, p. 28). Nos 24-26 Meeting Street were listed in 1983 and since that time No. 24 has fallen vacant.

References

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/3/21/1 – First Edition Ordnance Survey map 1833
2. PRONI OS/6/3/21/2 – Second Edition Ordnance Survey map 1859
3. PRONI OS/6/3/21/3 – Third Edition Ordnance Survey map 1903
4. PRONI OS/6/3/21/4 – Fourth Edition Ordnance Survey map 1919-20
5. PRONI VAL/1/D/3/13 – Townland Valuation map c. 1834
6. PRONI VAL/1/B/342 – Townland Valuations c. 1830
7. PRONI VAL/2/B/3/38A – Griffith’s Valuation 1861
8. PRONI VAL/12/E/122/3/4 – Annual Revisions Town Plan 1906 – c. 1935
9. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/10A – Annual Revisions 1864-1878
10. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/10B – Annual Revisions 1879-1891
11. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/10C – Annual Revisions 1892-1898
12. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/11A – Annual Revisions 1899-1910
13. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/11B – Annual Revisions 1911-1919
14. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/11C – Annual Revisions 1920-1930
15. PRONI Wills Catalogue (23 Mar 1876)
16. Ulster Town Directories (1852-1918)
17. Ordnance Survey map – 202-4SW (1973)

Secondary Sources

1. Brett, C. E. B., ‘Historic buildings, groups of buildings, areas of architectural importance in the towns and villages of Mid Down: Hillsborough, Dromore, Dromara, Ballynahinch, the Spa, Drumaness and Saintfield’ Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1974.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
I. Quality and survival of Interior
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
S. Authenticity
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A three-storey two-bay Georgian terraced house, built c.1830, one of a pair with No 26 (HB17/15/033B). Architectural detailing is largely intact with much historic fabric surviving. It is a good example of the type, having developed fro a Georgian original to a Victorian appearance. Together with No 26 and these buildings form a representative example of the development of the town and its building styles.

General comments

New listing criteria R & S to be added when available.