7 Mount Pleasant, Tennyson Avenue, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 3TB

7 Mount Pleasant, Tennyson Avenue, Bangor

A three-storey two-bay mid-terrace Victorian dwelling, one of a terrace of four, built around 1894. The building retains its original character and robust detailing, and has significant group value with the other three terrace buildings on the site. It exemplifies the larger terrace dwellings that developed Bangor in the later 19th century following the arrival of the railway.

The house is located on an elevated site off Tennyson Avenue, overlooking Bangor Marina and Belfast Lough, west of Bangor Town Centre. The building is set within a landscape of similar stucco rendered residential terraces and villas from the same period.

The exterior features a pitched natural slate roof with clay ridge tiles, with a hipped slate roof over the projecting bay, leaded hips and a terminating clay finial. Cast-iron rainwater goods with cavetto moulded gutters and circular downpipes are fitted; uPVC replacements are present to the rear. Chimney-stacks are rendered with cornice detail and clay pots. The walling is stucco render with a projecting plinth, string, cill course and corbelling. The original windows are timber single-glazed 1/1 sliding sash with horns, though uPVC replacements are fitted to the rear.

The principal entrance, facing east, is asymmetrically arranged with the front door located on the left. It comprises a timber four-panel bolection moulded door with a fixed light over and brass ironmongery. The door is flanked by panelled pilasters rising to scrolled foliate console brackets, supporting a dentilled entablature surmounted by a plain raised pediment panel. Above the door is a square-headed window with a swept canopy on console brackets breaking the moulded string. A three-storey canted bay rises to the right, with square-headed windows to ground and first floor featuring moulded surrounds, and diminished round arched windows to the second floor.

The left gable is abutted by 6 Mount Pleasant. The rear elevation features a subservient three-storey single-bay gabled return with lower eaves and ridge level. A ground floor window has been altered to a doorway accessing a single-storey extension infilling the left-hand yard. Various sized uPVC windows have been installed throughout. The right gable is abutted by 8 Mount Pleasant.

The site is elevated and slopes towards the front, with a large sloping front garden detached from the house by a gravel car parking area and stepped access to an elevated garden terrace. The rear is enclosed by a continuous rubble masonry wall with a timber sheeted access gate.

Historical Development

The area of Bangor began developing in the late 19th century as the town expanded into a fashionable resort and commuter town following the railway's opening in 1865. The land was shown as empty fields on the 1858 ordnance survey but by 1901 Princetown Road had been laid out with terraces and villas. The site was initially owned by Viscount Bangor and divided into plots sold in 1877. The current terrace was developed in 1894 by Robert Bowman and valued as four houses with yards and small gardens. Three were valued at £28 and number 10, on a smaller plot, at £25. The four houses appear in photographs from around 1914 and 1921 and are similar in style to Bowman Terrace on Queen's Parade, built around 15 years earlier by James Bowman, a brick manufacturer, suggesting the two were relatives. Robert Bowman is listed in the 1880 street directory as a butcher of Main Street and town commissioner.

The houses were let to tenants of professional and petty-bourgeois classes, sufficiently well-to-do to maintain at least one maidservant. The first recorded occupier was John Moore in 1894. By the 1901 census, Matilda B Minnis occupied the house with her adult daughter and niece, living on income from money and property, with a 15-year-old domestic servant from County Tyrone. The 1901 census records the house as 'first class' containing thirteen rooms. The valuation was reduced to £27 in 1906. Edward Ellis occupied the house by 1908. A shed was added around 1910 without valuation change; the same year noted rent at £36 plus taxes. In 1911 James Titterington, a flax merchant, occupied the house with his wife and six of their ten children, including servants—a cook and general domestic from Dublin and a parlour maid from County Mayo. The Ellis family later occupied it, with Harriett Ellis in 1929 and Charlotte Ellis in 1930.

The house continues in use as a domestic dwelling and has recently been extended by a single storey to the rear.