3-5 East Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey terrace block near the W end of the S side of East Street consisting of two gabled houses constructed in basalt rubble.

HB24/09/012A No.3. The front (N) facade consists of a modern glazed door to the centre of the ground floor with a sash window (with vertical glazing bars) to the left. To the right of the door is a carriage entrance with a (roughly) elliptical arch head. The arch itself is constructed in basalt and sandstone ‘voussoirs’. To the first floor are two windows as ground floor, but with red brick ‘lintels’.
The W gable is blank. To the rear there is a modern single storey flat roofed extension which contains a conservatory and part of the kitchen. The first floor of the rear facade of the main house is a window (now with modern frame) to the left and a glazed door (which leads onto a balcony on the roof of the single storey extension) to the right. The rear facade is rendered.

HB24/09/012B No.5 The front facade of this house has a modern glazed door to the right on the ground floor, with a window (as No.3) to the left. To the first floor are two similar windows with red brick ‘lintels’. To the rear is a small single storey flat roofed extension with a modern door and window. To the first floor of the rear facade of the main house is a window with modern frame. The rear facade is rendered and painted.

The roof of the entire block has Bangor blue slates with two concrete brick chimney stacks. There is a small Velux window to the rear of the roof of No.5. Mixture of PVC and cast iron rw goods to both houses.

Historical information

During the later 1760s and 1770s Alexander Stewart, who had become landlord of Newtownards in 1744, embarked upon an extensive improvement scheme for the town. The centrepiece of these developments was the construction of the new market house, around which a new more regular street pattern was laid out, particularly on the north side, and sixty new houses added between c.1769 and 1777 ‘mostly built of stone or slated’. This block may have began life as a pair of these new houses. Two houses are recorded as being on this site in the c.1836 valuation records, though because they were below the rateable value, the names of the occupants are not mentioned.
The mainly basalt construction of both these properties is slightly unusual given the preponderance of local sandstone.
The red brick arch ‘lintels’ to the first floor windows at the front are possibly replacements added in the later nineteenth or early twentieth century.

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/M34/1-26 Londonderry Papers, maps of Newtownards Corporation, 1811-26. [The Londonderry Papers contain many documents (including maps and leases) dealing with the development of the town of Newtownards from the 1700s onwards.].
3 PRONI OS Maps 1st ed. 1834, Co. Down 6.
4 PRONI VAL 1B/34 p.99 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), p.88.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Two storey terrace block consisting of two houses constructed mainly in basalt rubble and possibly dating from the late 1700s. The front facades of both houses are still intact and well maintained but the interiors appear to be largely modern in appearance.