96-98 Frances Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey restaurant (formerly two houses) set in the terrace on the N side of Frances Street (near the E end).

Front S facade has a large central elliptical arch recess (formerly a carriage entrance) now with a modern glazed door with sidelights. Above the archway is a PVC internally illuminated sign. To either side of the central arch is a ‘Gibbsian’-style ‘Ards’ doorway now glazed. To the far right and the far left is a window, both of which now have PVC frames and narrow smooth render surrounds. To the first floor are three evenly spaced windows, as ground floor. Between the second and third windows in a PVC internally illuminated projecting sign. The front facade is in sandstone.

The rear facade had bee completely modernised and greatly extended in recent times with a massive two storey gable return (set at different levels). Nothing of the original rear facade appears to remain.

The main roof is pitched with Bangor blue slates to the front and concrete tiles to the rear. There is a small rendered chimney stack to the E side of the roof at the rear.

Historical information

Frances Street was laid out in c.1817 as part of a new broad thoroughfare to link the new coach road from Belfast to the Donaghadee Road. It appears to have replaced a much narrower Back Lane, which is shown on Colville’s 1720 plan of the town. The OS Map of 1834 shows us that by this stage the western side of the street had been developed, but the eastern end (then known as ‘Little Frances Street’) was largely bare on the south side. This particular site, however, appears to have been built upon by that date, thus (assuming that Frances Street was indeed created by widening Back Lane and assuming that all of the former properties on both sides of the former Back Lane were swept away in the process) indicating that the houses which stood on this site until recently may have been built between c.1811 and c.1834.

The OS Memoirs (c.1834) make reference to the erection of new houses by the Marquis of Londonderry at this time for which he was ‘granting leases for 60 years or 3 lives at a rate of 1s per foot, upon which they can get the house erected at the rate of 1s per foot’.
The valuation records of c.1836 state that the block on this site was part of a group of ‘thirteen houses exempt’ (i.e. below the rateable value of £5).

Until recently, the carriage arch (now partly revealed once again) was completely filled in with matching Scrabo sandstone. The block was converted to a restaurant some time after 1972.

References- Primary sources
1 ‘The town and tenements of Newtown in the County of Down...1720’ reprinted in Trevor McCavery 'Newtown: a history of Newtownards' (Dundonald 1994) p.79. Though the author of this book gives no reference as to this map, the original undoubtedly belongs to the Colville estate maps contained within the Londonderry Papers [PRONI D.654/M1A].
2 PRONI D.654/M36-38B Londonderry Papers- Maps of tenements in Frances Street 1828.
3 PRONI OS Maps 1st ed. 1834, Co. Down 6.
4 PRONI VAL 1B/34 p.107 1st valuation Newtownards parish, Newtownards, c.1836 (see also associated town plan).
5 PRONI OS Maps 1st rev. 1858-60, Co. Down 6.
6 Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), pp.105-106.
7 PRONI 2nd (‘Griffith’s’) valuation, Newtownards parish, Newtownards 1863. [The town plan to accompany the 2nd valuation does not appear to be held at PRONI thus making it difficult to match the information contained within the written record with actual buildings.]

Secondary sources
1 Trevor McCavery 'Newtown: a history of Newtownards' (Dundonald 1994), pp.105-7.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Two storey terrace block of perhaps c.1830 formerly consisting of two houses, now a restaurant. The front facade of this block, though now sporting PVC window frames and modern signage, is still largely intact and retains its ‘Gibbsian’-style door surrounds. The rear, however, has been greatly extended and the interior completely altered beyond all recognition.