51-55 Bridge Street, Comber, Co. Down, BT23 5AT

Bridge Street, Comber contains a terrace of three two-storey gabled buildings at the eastern end of the south side. Originally constructed between 1780 and 1799, these properties functioned as houses until they were converted to shops during the 1970s and 1980s. The buildings have been substantially altered in the course of these conversions.

The front (north) façade of No. 55, at the eastern end of the terrace, features a modern full-width shop front with a large, irregularly shaped internally illuminated PVC sign mounted above. The first floor has two almost square windows with fixed single-pane wooden frames. No. 53 displays a similar modern shop front with a rectangular externally illuminated sign board. Its first floor contains two sliding sash and case windows without astragals. To the right of the shop front is a timber door with vertical sheeting that provides access to a communal passageway serving the rear of all three shops, with a matching 'loft' door positioned above it. No. 51 has a steel roller shutter door that, when lowered, completely conceals the modern shop front behind it. Its first-floor windows feature modern frames designed to simulate sash windows with Georgian panes. The eastern gable is blank, with the sign board extending halfway across it.

To the rear of No. 55 is a long flat-roofed return adjoining a gabled single-storey outhouse built principally in Scrabo stone with brick dressings. The first floor of the main building has a single barred window to the right with a single pane. No. 53 has a single-storey flat-roofed extension with one modern window to its west face and a sash window with Georgian panes to the first floor. No. 51 is extended by a two-storey flat-roofed structure with a modern window to the first floor and a blocked window opening to its right. Behind the two-storey section lies a long single-storey section with two door openings beneath a bracketed canopy of corrugated Perspex to the east.

The roof of the entire block is finished in Bangor Blue slate. Each property has a rendered chimney stack on the east side, mostly without pots. Rainwater goods are a mixture of cast iron and PVC.

Documentary evidence shows that this end of Bridge Street was vacant on the 1722 map of Comber but occupied on all subsequent available maps. The terrace likely dates from the later 18th or early 19th century and is probably that recorded on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map, where the valuation returns for that year identified the occupants as Jonathan Dixon, Patrick Tolan, and John Hamilton. A 1975 survey found Nos. 51 and 53 still functioning as houses, with No. 55 operating as a taxi office, its front façade not yet altered. No. 57, at the end of the terrace, appears to have been derelict in 1975 and was demolished thereafter.