26-44 Carnesure Terrace, (Old Ballygowan Road), Carnesure, Comber, Co. Down, BT23 5PE

Carnesure Terrace is a slightly picturesque two-storey terraced housing development situated on the east side of the north end of Old Ballygowan Road, south-west of Comber town centre in County Down. The terrace is set amongst semi-rural surroundings, with long gardens to the rear and trees and a small stream visible on the opposite side of the road.

The bulk of the terrace, comprising numbers 30-44, was built in 1904 by John Andrews & Co. for workers employed at the company's nearby spinning mill. Numbers 26-28 at the north end are slightly older and appear on the Ordnance Survey map of 1901 but differ markedly from the rest of the terrace in both size and detailing.

Numbers 30-44 form a uniform group arranged as handed pairs. Each pair has a central gabled porch to the front (west-facing) façade with a panelled door to the north and south leading into their respective properties. Each doorway has a moulded surround with a keystone. The gabled face of each porch features a pair of semicircular arch-headed window openings with sash frames and linked label moulding above. The porches are finished with Bangor blue slates, decorative shaped barges, small tie-beams and finials. The front façade of each house displays two first-floor sash windows with vertical glazing bars, with another window at ground floor level positioned to either the left or right of the porch. To the rear, each pair of houses has a two-storey gabled return with a door and at least one kitchen window to the ground floor, one window to the first floor near the main house intersection, and one window to the first floor of the gable (two windows in total to the gable). The rear of the main houses each have a single window to ground floor and first floor. Window frames at the rear display considerable variation from the front, with many modern replacements installed and some kitchen windows enlarged. Small single-storey lean-tos attached to the gables of the returns once served as outside toilets. The façade of numbers 30-44 is finished in lined render to the front with plain render to the rear, unpainted at the front with a few rear yards whitewashed. The south gable is rendered and the south-west corner has chamfered quoins. The roof is covered in Bangor blue slates and the rainwater goods comprise a mixture of cast iron and PVC, with PVC mainly to the rear. Chimney stacks are rendered. The terrace is constructed of brick.

Numbers 26-28 are set at the north end and differ substantially from the remainder. Both are slightly smaller with different detailing. To the front, the arrangement generally matches numbers 30-44, with a central shared gabled porch with respective doors to north and south and windows to the gable, plus three windows in the same positions as the front façades of the rest of the terrace. However, each front opening has yellow brick dressings and the rest of the façade is constructed of sandstone rubble. To the rear there is no gabled return, simply a single window and door to the ground floor and one window to the first floor, all with red brick dressings. All window openings have shallow segmental arch heads with Georgian pane sash frames. The porch windows match the rest of the terrace. The rear and north gable are also rubble-built, though the gable is untidily patched with red brick along the line of the chimney breast. The roof is Bangor blue slated with a yellow brick chimney stack to the north. Rainwater goods comprise a mixture of cast iron and PVC.

Each property originally had a low rendered wall to the front, all of which once sported iron railings subsequently removed during the Second World War.

Historically, the townland of Carnesure was purchased in the late 18th century by John Andrews with part of £10,000 he won in the Irish State Lottery in 1783. Numbers 26-28 appear to date slightly earlier than the main terrace of 1904 and are indicated on the Ordnance Survey map of 1901. Local residents have suggested that one of the pair began as a blacksmith's forge and another as a single-storey building, though no physical evidence of these claims was found. Number 32 is the only property in the terrace currently outside the ownership of John Andrews & Co., having been sold in 1984.