121-125 Frances Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single storey terrace near E end of the S side of Frances Street, consisting of three houses, recently completely renovated.

No.121 is at the W side of the terrace. The front (N) facade consists of a panelled door to the left and two windows to the right. The windows have modern frames made to resemble sash frames with Georgian panes (all front facade windows in the terrace are like these).

To the rear are two modern windows on either side of a glazed door.

The front facade is finished in rough cast with a smooth rendered base, the rear in plain render.

No.123 repeats this arrangement but the front door is to the right and the spacing of the windows (to the left) is different. The front door has a small glazed panel.

No.125 is similar to No.121 but with a small glazed panel to the front door and slightly different spacing between the front windows.

The roof of the entire terrace is gabled with dark concrete tiles. Each house has a large Velux window to the front and rear. Rendered chimney stack between Nos.123 and 125.

PVC rw goods.

The openings to the front of this terrace were altered during recent renovations. Previously the sequence of the openings (from the left) ran: window, window, door, window, window door, door window. The pitch of the roof was raised slightly during the recent renovations.

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 (‘generally 1 storey’) 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 terrace which consisted of ‘four houses exempt’ (i.e. below the rateable value of £5).

The recent renovation of this terrace has resulted in the alteration of all of the houses both inside and out, with some door and window openings shifting position and the pitch of the roof raised.

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

Single storey terrace with attic, of probable early nineteenth century origin, consisting of three houses recently completely renovated inside and out with some window and door openings altered in the process. The pitch of the roof has also been raised and the interiors are, to all intents and purposes, modern.