Site of former 34 Bridge Street, Comber, Co. Down, BT23 5AT

The site of a former two-story terrace house, likely dating from around 1835 to 1840, now forms part of a much larger modern sheltered dwelling complex. The house was demolished around 1988.

Formerly located in the middle of the terrace on the north side of Bridge Street, the house was described in a 1970 survey as having a slated roof, rendered chimneys, and rough cast walls. It featured four first-floor windows with drop-hung sashes and Georgian panes, each with shouldered cement surrounds. The ground floor had two light drop-hung windows, lacking astragals. A central doorway, also drop-hung like the first-floor windows, was distinguished by stone pilasters and an archivolt with a keystone. The archway included a fanlight over a panelled door. The frontage of the house was approximately 30 feet wide.

A building is depicted on this site on a map of Comber from 1722. While none of the houses listed in the 1833 valuation records for this part of Bridge Street matched the demolished house’s dimensions, they indicate rebuilding work was underway at that time. Given that the terrace on either side was constructed of sandstone, a material increasingly used in the Comber area from the 1830s, the house likely dates from the years following 1834. Its late Georgian door surround supports this estimation. The house, along with its neighbour to the east, was demolished around 1988, and the site is now occupied by the modern sheltered housing complex, extended westward and northward.