17 Bow Street, Donaghadee, Co Down, BT21 0HD

17 Bow Street, Donaghadee, is a two-storey terrace block comprising a house and shop, probably built around 1780. The northern front facade retains fairly rare Georgian architectural features and remains a significant example of late eighteenth-century townscape development in the area.

The front facade is rendered and painted throughout. The ground floor features a central panelled door with a fanlight and sidelights with decorative tracery. To the right of the doorway is a shop front, consisting of a recessed glazed door and a large fixed light shop window with a fixed light inner window. The shop window frame appears to be relatively old, possibly from the early twentieth century. The first floor contains three large tripartite sash windows with Georgian panes.

The rear of the building features a long single-storey gabled return, culminating in a two-storey gabled section. This large return appears to have undergone recent alterations and has modern windows. Within the house, a sash window serves the stairwell at the landing just below the first floor. The roof of the entire block is gabled and covered in concrete pan tiles, with a small cast iron skylight to the front. Two rendered chimney stacks and cast iron rainwater goods complete the external detail.

Historical records suggest this section of the Bow Street terrace dates from around 1770 to 1780. The site appears on Daniel De la Cherois's map of circa 1780, and handwriting discovered on an upper floor wall of the adjacent property was dated 1786. The home bakery section was originally part of the house but appears to have functioned as a shop for most of the twentieth century. Valuation records of circa 1836 identify the property as a house in the possession of Mrs Wallace, commanding a substantial rateable value of £10.