18 Victoria Crescent

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Mid-terrace two-bay two-storey with attic polychromatic brick house, built c.1880 with single-storey modern redbrick extension to rear. Rectangular on plan facing north and built as part of a terrace of nineteen similar houses laid out on a crescent plan running from Millbrook Road to Wesley Street.

Pitched natural slate roof with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles, original redbrick chimneystack to east, replacement brick chimneystack to west and a gabled redbrick dormer. Plastic rainwater goods to yellowbrick angled eaves course and frieze below. Redbrick walling laid in English garden wall bond with yellowbrick courses and brick plinth course. Segmental-headed window openings with yellowbrick surrounds, black brick keystones, painted red sandstone sills and uPVC windows.

Front elevation is two windows wide. Projecting arched yellowbrick door surround having painted black brick keystone, impost mouldings, stop-chamfered pilasters, brick plinth blocks and uPVC door with fanlight over.

Left side elevation abutted by adjoining house No.20 (HB19/16/017R).

Rear elevation abutted by flat-roofed single-storey modern redbrick extension and a small enclosed rear yard.

Right side elevation abutted by adjoining building No.16 (HB19/16/017P).

Setting:
Part of a crescent of nineteen similar houses laid out on Wesley Street and Millbrook Road.

Roof Natural slate
RWG Plastic
Walling Red and yellow brick
Windows uPVC

Historical information

The terrace first appears on the third edition OS map of c1900. It appears to date from c1880 and shows some stylistic echoes of the neighbouring Methodist church which was opened in 1876. This part of Lisburn began to be developed towards the end of the nineteenth century, comprising largely low-cost housing for workers in the nearby linen mills. Barbour’s thread mill, Richardson’s beetling mill and the Island flax spinning mill were all a short distance away. The Lisburn Standard of 1898 advertises seven dwelling houses in Low Road, which is adjacent to the current dwellings, saying that the area is ‘one of the best letting districts in the town, convenient to Messrs Barbour’s Mills and other large public works’. (Lisburn Standard) The present terrace was of rather better quality than other housing in the area and the current occupants state that it was built by Barbour’s as accommodation for ‘bachelors and spinsters’.

Census returns from the early twentieth century show that about half the inhabitants of the terrace were employed in the linen industry, mostly linen thread (and therefore likely to be employees of Barbour’s Thread Mill). Many other occupations are also represented within the terrace, the larger houses around the curve of Wesley and Millbrook Streets tending to be run as boarding houses. Despite the current residents’ perception that this was accommodation for single people, the majority of residents in the first decade of the twentieth century appear to have been families. (1901, 1911 census)

At the time of the 1901 census the house was occupied by two separate families. Out of the seven available rooms, five were occupied by Thomas Reavey, a pattern maker, and his wife and ten-year-old daughter. The other two rooms were occupied by Frank Debenham, born in Suffolk and a corporal in the Royal Engineers and his Pembrokeshire wife. By 1911 the house had been taken over by Johnston Lewis, an unemployed commercial clerk of 64who lived with his wife and three adult children. Their daughter was a National School teacher, one son was also an unemployed commercial clerk and the younger son was a clerk in the grocery trade. The house was designated 2nd class according to its size and construction materials. (1901, 1911 census)

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/1/68/3 – Third Edition OS Map c1900
2. PRONI OS/6/1/68/4 – Fourth Edition OS Map 1921
3. PRONI OS/6/1/68/5 – Fifth Edition OS Map 1939
4. Lisburn Standard, Feburary 5th 1898
5. 1901 census online
6. 1911 census online

Secondary Sources

1. Owner information

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
S. Authenticity
T. Historic Importance
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Mid-terrace two-bay two-storey with attic polychromatic brick house, built c.1880. Despite the loss of its original windows the house retains much of its late victorian character externally. Built as part of a terrace of nineteen similar houses originally built for workers in the nearby linen mills at Hilden, it is laid out as a crescent over two streets converging at an unusual acute angle (HB19/16/017A-S). It has group value with the other bnouses in this distinctive terrace and with the Methodist Church (HB19/16/018A) and Manse (HB19/16/018B) to the north.

General comments

This record was completed without access to primary source material held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.