Church Street, Main Street & The Square, Greyabbey, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT22 2NQ

Greyabbey is a small village of medieval origin. The extensive ruins of a large 13th-century abbey lie close by. The village now comprises mainly 19th and 20th-century buildings.

Church Street is situated at the north-east edge of the village. Its eastern limit, less than a mile north-east of the village centre, is almost entirely rural in character. Heading westwards towards the village, it runs parallel to the boundary of the Rosemount estate, past St. Saviour's Parish Church and Grey Abbey, into the more urban surroundings of the village proper. On the north-east side of the street within Greyabbey there is a mixture of one and two-storey dwelling houses of probable early 19th-century origin. The south-west side consists of a row of neat rubble-built single-storey dwellings dating probably from around the 1830s. The end house of this terrace, at the intersection with Main Street, is currently being rebuilt and extended at the rear.

Main Street and The Square form the hub of Greyabbey village. Main Street runs north-east to south-west, from the intersection of North Street and Church Street in the north-east to The Square at the south-west, near the coastline of Strangford Lough. The houses at the south-west end are late 18th-century and early 19th-century, mainly two-storey dwellings, whilst many of those to the north-east are modern. The oldest buildings within the village proper are Nos. 1 and 2 (A-B) The Square, a large section of which dates from around 1730. Generally the buildings within the south-west end of Main Street and The Square are well preserved, whilst original buildings remaining towards the opposite end have been either abandoned, neglected, or altered.

Church Street is indicated on Taylor's and Skinner's map of 1777, with buildings shown on either side. It also appears on the Ordnance Survey Map of 1834, but as the road enters the village it appears that some of the single-storey dwellings on the south-west side had not yet been built. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs, compiled around 1835, do not comment directly on Church Street, but mention that 'the road from Donaghadee [the present North Street to the north-west of Church Street] has been improved lately by building a neat row of ground floor houses on either side of the street...built of stone'.

The Square and the south-west end of Main Street are built on land reclaimed from Strangford Lough in the early 18th century. This land once lay directly on the side of an older, straighter road from Newtownards, to the north-west of the Rosemount estate. Around 1730 a large inn was built alongside the road, much of which still survives as the present Nos. 1, 2A and 2B The Square. In 1744 Walter Harris described this part of the village as 'entirely regular' with 'handsome brick houses covered in slates, for the habitation of manufacturers'. Harris also refers to 'the two other streets of this village now carried strait, and decent houses built for the inhabitants', which may be a reference to the north-east half of Main Street and/or North Street and Church Street.

Taylor's and Skinner's 1777 map indicates buildings on the north-west and south-east sides of The Square and Main Street. The Ordnance Survey Map of 1834 shows that by this time the north-east side of Main Street was almost completely developed, with the road to Newtownards re-orientated slightly further to the north (where it remains today). The south-east side of the street, however, had much fewer buildings. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs record that at this time the village was neither lighted nor paved and had '138 one-storey houses, all slated, 27 two-storey houses, slated'. Later photographic evidence suggests that most of the single-storey dwellings were situated within North Street, Church Street and the south-east end of Main Street, with many of the larger houses further to the western side of the village.