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

8 Mount Pleasant is a three-storey, two-bay Victorian mid-terrace dwelling, one of a terrace of four, built around 1894. It stands on an elevated site off Tennyson Avenue in Bangor West, overlooking Belfast Lough and Bangor Marina, and is positioned west of Bangor Town Centre. The building retains its original character and robust detailing, and holds group value with the other three terrace buildings that form this unified composition.

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles, and features a hipped slate roof over the projecting bay with leaded hips and a terminating clay finial. Cast-iron rainwater goods with cavetto-moulded gutters and circular downpipes are fitted, though some uPVC replacements exist to the rear. Chimney-stacks are rendered with cornice detail and clay pots. The walling is stucco render with a projecting plinth, string course, cill course, and corbelling throughout.

Windows are timber single-glazed 1/1 sliding sash with horns. The principal entrance door, which faces east and is asymmetrically arranged on the left side of the front elevation, is timber with four panels and bolection moulding, with a fixed light over and brass ironmongery. The entrance is flanked by panelled pilasters rising to scrolled foliate console brackets that support a dentilled entablature, surmounted by a plain raised pediment panel. Above this is a square-headed window with a swept canopy on console brackets breaking the moulded string course. The right side of the front elevation features a three-storey canted bay with square-headed windows to ground and first floors with moulded surrounds, and diminished round-arched windows to the second floor. The left gable abuts 7 Mount Pleasant, and the right gable abuts 9 Mount Pleasant. The rear elevation has a subservient three-storey single-bay gabled return with lower eaves and ridge level, with various sized timber sliding sash windows throughout.

The site is elevated and slopes toward the front, with a large 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. The setting is surrounded by similar stucco-rendered residential terraces and villas from the same period.

This area of Bangor began development toward the end of the nineteenth century as the town expanded into a fashionable resort and commuter town following the opening of the railway in 1865. The land was initially owned by Viscount Bangor and was divided into plots and sold in 1877. In 1894, the current terrace entered valuation records as a development by Robert Bowman, comprising four houses with yards and small gardens. Three houses were valued at £28 and the fourth at £25. Photographs from around 1914 and 1921 show the four houses to be very similar in style and execution to Bowman Terrace on Queen's Parade, which had been built some fifteen years earlier, also by a Bowman (likely James Bowman, a brick manufacturer). Robert Bowman is listed in the 1880 street directory as a butcher of Main Street, Bangor, and also as one of the town's commissioners.

The houses were let to tenants of professional and petty-bourgeois classes, sufficiently well-to-do to keep at least one maidservant. The first occupier noted was Mrs Gamble in 1894. At the 1901 census, the tenant was Jane King, a widow living on the interest of money, with her two adult sons—one a tea merchant and one an apprentice—and her young niece and nephew. The household employed a domestic servant, Lizzie McQuade from County Fermanagh. The house was recognised as 'first class' due to its size and construction, containing thirteen rooms. Sarah Blair, an American-born spinster, was the subsequent tenant in 1906, having earlier lived in number nine. The valuation was reduced to £27 the same year. James Morrow occupied the house in 1908, and by 1911 it was occupied by James Anderson, a commission agent, and his wife from County Cavan. Their daughter, a National School teacher, also lived with them. The Anderson family remained in residence until at least 1930. The house remains in use as a domestic dwelling.