The Square, Comber, Co. Down, ** See General Comments **

The Square, Comber, County Down

The Square forms the historic heart of the town of Comber, the point at which the town's major routes converge. Castle Street (to and from Belfast) intersects to the north-west, Killinchy Street (to and from Killinchy, Killyleagh and Downpatrick) to the south-west, Bridge Street (to Newtownards) to the north-east, and High Street (to Ballygowan, Saintfield and beyond) to the west and north-west. The Square is lined on all sides, to varying degrees, with mainly two-storey houses and shops dating largely from the later 18th and early 19th centuries.

At the centre stands a tall column memorial in the manner of Nelson's Column, erected in 1844 to commemorate local military hero Rollo Gillespie. The column is topped with a statue of Gillespie himself. Surrounding it is a public area laid out with floral borders, areas of lawn and paving. To the north-west of this central area stands a war memorial erected in 1922.

The north side of The Square retains much of its original character and consists of a terrace of two-storey buildings, now largely in office and commercial use, which appear to date from the mid to later 18th century. The house at the far eastern end of this side, No. 14, may predate some of its immediate neighbours, though much of the classical moulding to its front facade may have been added around 1840. Nos. 6–12 have undergone some alteration in recent years but have largely maintained their original appearance, with fieldstone rubble facades, mainly Georgian sash windows and some pedimented doorways. No. 4, which is rendered, has modern window frames to the front, though most of its window openings, while relatively large, appear to be original, as does its corniced stone doorway. No. 2, now a chemist, was substantially altered in the 1960s and is dominated by a series of large, modern window openings.

The east side presents a less homogeneous appearance. At the northern end is a short two-storey terrace containing a pub and shops, possibly dating from the late 18th century, into which large ground-floor bow windows have been inserted in recent years. Immediately to the south of this, and set back from the building line, is a large two-storey parish hall that appears to date from around 1950. Further south still is the entrance to the graveyard, within which stands the simple Gothic parish church of 1840.

The south side of The Square is dominated by a single large property spanning its entire width. It is three storeys to the centre with two-storey wings. The block was originally four separate properties but has been largely amalgamated and greatly altered both internally and externally; much of the ground floor is now occupied by a car showroom with large areas of modern glazing.

The west side has witnessed the most significant recent losses. In 1998 and 1999 the northern half of the terrace was demolished — much of it accurately datable to 1731 — and replaced by a new two-storey office on the site of the former No. 7 and a new, larger two-storey pub (Nos. 1–5). At the southern end stands a large two-storey house dating from at least around 1825, still largely intact, though its former carriage arch has been filled in to form the entrance to the upper floor, which now contains flats. In front of this house is a distinctive cobbled footpath depicting, among other things, the figures of a man, a dog and a hare; this footpath was re-laid around 1992.

Historical Background

The origins of The Square are intertwined with the establishment of a Cistercian abbey on the site of the present church and graveyard in 1199. A small settlement may have grown up around the abbey, but following the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1540s it was largely abandoned, and the buildings were put to the torch in 1572. When James Hamilton was granted possession of the abbey lands in the early 17th century he found it in ruins. Hamilton established a new settlement a mile to the south, known as New Comber, but his successor as landlord, Hugh Montgomery, repaired the abbey church in the 1620s to serve as the parish church. Both New Comber and the church (marked as 'Owld Cumber') appear on Thomas Raven's estate map of 1625. At some point thereafter New Comber was abandoned and a substantial settlement re-established around the church. By the early 18th century much of the town as we know it had been laid out: The Square, High Street, Bridge Street and the road to Killinchy all appear on a map of 1722, with what appears to be a market cross shown in the centre of The Square.

Most of the buildings lining The Square appear to have been built in the mid to later 18th century or the early 19th century. The church was rebuilt in 1840, and four years later the Gillespie monument was erected; Gillespie himself had been born in a house on the south side, on the site now occupied by the eastern part of the car showroom. During the mid to later 20th century The Square suffered significant losses. The rectory, a possibly 18th-century building to the south-west of the church, was demolished, as was the old Erasmus Smith schoolhouse built in 1813 on the east side. The facade of the large house on the south side was much altered when it was converted to a car showroom. In 1998 and 1999 over half of the west-side terrace — much of which could be precisely dated to 1731 — was demolished.

Note: This record is a general appreciation of The Square as a whole. Individual buildings are separately recorded, each with its own description and listing grade. Primary sources consulted include Thomas Raven's estate maps of 1625–6 (originals in Bangor Castle Museum, copies in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, ref. T.870), a 1722 survey of the town held in PRONI (D.654/M1B/2), pictorial lease maps and surveys of 1786, 1797, 1801 and 1810 from the Londonderry Papers in PRONI, Pigot & Co.'s Dublin and Hibernian Provincial Directory (1824), the first valuation of 1834, the first-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, Slater's directories of 1846, 1856 and 1870, the Ordnance Survey Memoirs for County Down (published by Queen's University Belfast, 1991), Bassett's County Down Guide and Directory (1886), the W. A. Green photographic collection (Ulster Folk and Transport Museum), photographs dating from around 1900–1950 held by the Monuments and Buildings Record (largely copies of the Lawrence Collection, with original negatives at the National Library of Ireland), and the second-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901. Secondary sources include Sydney Andrews's Nine Generations: A History of the Andrews Family, Millers of Comber (1958), the Archaeological Survey of County Down (HMSO Belfast, 1966), and Norman Nevin's The Story of Comber (typescript, c. 1980, held in Comber library).