59 Queens Parade

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A three-storey two-bay Victorian mid-terrace dwelling built c.1880. Located adjacent to Marine Gardens, on an elevated site on the Bangor promenade; east of Bangor West and north of the town centre.

Pitched natural slate roof with clay crested ridge tiles and leaded hips over projecting bay; cast iron ogee gutters (uPVC to rear); cast-iron circular downpipes. Rendered chimney-stack with cornice detailing and yellow clay pots. Stucco rendered walling with plinth mouldings, string and corbel course. 1/1 single-glazed, sliding sash with horns. Principal entrance, timber door with four moulded panels; rectangular fixed light over.

Principal elevation faces north-east and is asymmetrically arranged. Front door located on the right; smooth render surrounds rising to scroll console brackets, supporting entablature. Two-storey canted bay on the left; square-headed moulded surrounds and continuous cill course to first floor; diminished round arched openings to second floor. First floor window over entrance with moulded surround.

Left elevation is abutted by 58 Queens Parade (HB23/07/012B).

The rear elevation is abutted by a two-storey pitched roof return, projecting from the left hand bay; with two-storey hipped addition extending the full width of the site. View to rear elevation obscured. Views from distance suggest timber sliding sash window to rear facade.

Right elevation is abutted by 60 Queens Parade (HB23/07/013B).

Setting

Garden to the front with stepped concrete path running parallel to lawn. Rubble masonry boundary wall with rendered coping and piers with modern mild steel gate. Landscaped public gardens north of the site with views towards the marina. South of the site bounded by Somerset Avenue with alley access to rear return. Small rear yard enclosed.

Roofing: Natural slate
Walling: Stucco render
Windows: Timber
RWG: Cast-iron / uPVC

Historical information

This part of Queen’s Parade was developed during the late 1870s and early 1880s to serve the increasing numbers of professional classes and holidaymakers attracted to Bangor with the opening of the railway in 1865. The terrace of which these houses forms part, replaced an earlier row of single storey cottages shown in a photograph dating from the 1870s. (Wilson, p.40) According to Patton one of these cottages was occupied by Thomas Whannell, whose two daughters married builders who worked on Bangor Castle. (Patton, p.180) This part of Bangor was then known as the ‘Kinnegar’ with reference to a coney or rabbit warren that occupied the area prior to its development. The street was renamed following a visit by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1903, and was altered in the valuation records in 1907. (Patton, p.175, Annual Revisions) The majority of the houses in the street were let to families of the professional or petit-bourgeois class, while others were run as boarding houses. (1901, 1911 census) The terrace is first shown on the third edition OS map of 1901, the road before it captioned ‘Kinnegar’.

This house is one of a semi-detached pair dating from c1880, and built in a similar style to the adjoining pair to the west (HB23/07/021A-B). The present houses were built by a different developer and slightly later than the adjoining pair, displaying some minor differences in style and execution.

The houses first enter valuation records in 1880, each house described as ‘new’, valued at £30 and initially listed as vacant. They replace a cottage formerly on the site that was valued at £2.10s. The immediate lessor is Joseph Ferguson, the likely developer of the site. A Scotsman from Arbroath, Ferguson was a master mariner who lived in Mountcollyer Avenue, Belfast and eventually died at sea. (Letters of Administration, death of Joseph Ferguson) From 1854 to 1862, as a newly-qualified master, Ferguson captained a ship called the Edwin Fox. The ship initially worked as a troop carrier during the Crimean war and then notoriously carried Chinese labourers to Cuba to work in the sugar plantations. While Ferguson was the captain, the ship also carried convicts to Australia and pale ale to India. (www.nzmaritime.co.nz)

In around 1880 Ferguson appears to have settled, at least temporarily, in Bangor, the home town of his wife, Agnes. The couple had six children, at least four of whom were born in Bangor. Ferguson appears to have built the houses in Queen’s Parade at about the time he had his first child, Hester, perhaps with a view to providing an income for his young family while he was at sea (1901 census, 1911 census). Letters of administration obtained by his widow state that Joseph Ferguson died, ‘as is supposed on 25th December 1895 at Sea’ and by 1901 the valuation records note that Agnes Ferguson has become immediate lessor of the two properties in Queen’s Parade. (Letters of Administration, death of Joseph Ferguson; Annual Revisions)

The current house was reduced in value to £25 in 1886 and £22 in 1907 for reasons which are unclear, perhaps as the result of an appeal. The rent charged was £32 plus taxes. The first recorded occupier of the house was Mrs Morgan in 1890, but by 1901 widow Anna Hart lived there with her eight-year-old son and a servant girl of sixteen. Annie Hart had a private income from annuities and had two visitors at the time of the census, one a hospital nurse from Dublin. (1901 census) By the time of the 1911 census Annie Hart had taken a boarder, an English widow of 83. (1911 census) Fanny Crosbie is listed as occupier in 1915 and Isabel Ferguson, daughter of the original developer of the house, master mariner Joseph Ferguson, had moved in by 1923, when she would have been thirty eight. Isabel had been sixteen at the time of the 1901 census, where she was described as an office clerk. (Annual Revisions, 1901 census) In 1924 Isabel’s older sister, Hester, who had previously worked as a milliner, joined her in the house. (Annual Revisions, 1911 census). The house remains a domestic residence and is currently undergoing renovation work.

References:

Primary Sources

1.PRONI OS/6/3/2/3 – Third Edition OS Map 1901
2.PRONI OS/6/3/2/4 – Fourth Edition OS Map 1919-26
3.PRONI OS/6/3/2/5 – Fifth Edition OS Map 1939
4.PRONI VAL/12/B/23/7A-K – Annual Revisions (1866-99)
5.PRONI VAL/12/B/23/9A-S – Annual Revisions (1900-1930)
6.PRONI VAL/12/B/17/10A-G – Annual Revisions (1867-1930)
7.PRONI VAL/12/E/129/1 – Annual Revisions Town Plans (c.1864-1899)
8.PRONI VAL/12/E/129/2 – Annual Revisions Town Plans (1898-c.1916)
9.PRONI Letters of Administration, Joseph Ferguson, died 25th December 1895
10.1901 census online
11.1911 census online

Secondary sources
1.Patton, M, “Bangor, An Historical Gazetteer” Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1999
2.Wilson, I “Bangor, Historic Photographs of the County Down town” Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1992
3.www.nzmaritime.co.nz – New Zealand Maritime Record

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

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

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A three-storey two-bay Victorian mid-terrace dwelling built c.1880 as part of a pair with adjoining HB23/07/013B now forming part of the larger terrace located on an elevated site on the Bangor promenade. Its original character and detailing survive. It has group value with its pair (HB23/07/013B) and is a good example of the type of larger terrace that formed part of the development of Bangor in the later 19th century after the arrival of the railway.

General comments

Please note this record has been renumbered it was previously recorded as HB23/07/013