31 Frances Street, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT23 3DW

31 Frances Street is a large two-storey terraced town house built around 1845–50, now converted to a shop, restaurant, and dental surgery. The building is recorded in the heritage register but does not meet the threshold for formal listing, though it retains significant local interest.

The front elevation faces north onto Frances Street and is rendered and painted. The ground floor contains a central entrance with a modern panelled and glazed door and sidelights with panelled aprons. The door and sidelights are framed by sturdy plain pilasters supporting an entablature with a 'bellied' frieze and cornice. To the left is a modern shop front, dating from around the 1960s, with a large picture window and adjacent panelled door, topped with a period-style sign board. To the right of the central doorway is a sash window with Georgian panes. Beyond this is an elliptical arch-headed former carriage entrance with in/out dressings and moulded impost blocks, now filled with a recent panelled and glazed door and screen. The first floor has five sash windows matching the ground floor arrangement.

The building has large two-storey gabled returns to either side at the rear. The inner faces of these returns feature mainly sash windows: three on the first floor of the right return and one on the ground floor, with two on the first floor of the left return (one of which has a modern frame). A modern projecting flat-roofed corridor extension has been added at ground floor level on the left return. A modern single-storey flat-roofed extension spans between both returns and is attached to the main rear facade. Above this extension, on the exposed first floor section of the main rear facade, is a large centrally placed semicircular-headed sash window with margin panes and horizontal glazing bars, flanked by smaller plain sash windows. The rear facade is finished in unpainted rough cast, with the recent extension in plain unpainted render.

The smaller gabled sections to each return link to an outbuilding, forming a courtyard at the rear. The roof is covered in asbestos-free slates. Four rendered chimney stacks rise from the structure. The building has a mixture of cast iron and PVC rainwater goods.

The property is shown occupied on Ordnance Survey maps of 1858–60, dating to the 1840s development of Newtownards. It remained a dwelling house until the 1950s. A shop was inserted to the east on the ground floor in approximately the 1960s. The carriage entrance and the western portion of the ground floor were converted to a dental surgery in 1988, and by this date the first floor housed a restaurant.