61 Queens Parade, Bangor, County Down, BT20 3BH

61 Queen's Parade is a three-storey, two-bay Victorian mid-terrace dwelling built around 1878, located on an elevated site on the Bangor promenade adjacent to Marine Gardens, east of Bangor West and north of the town centre. It was built as one of a semi-detached pair with the adjoining 62 Queen's Parade, and now forms part of a larger terrace. The house retains its original character and robust detailing throughout, and has group value with its pair.

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles coated with a tar mixture, leaded hips over the projecting bay, and cast-iron ogee gutters (uPVC to the rear). There is a rendered chimney-stack with yellow clay pots; the rear chimney has been removed above eaves level. The walls are stucco rendered with plinth mouldings, string course, and corbel course. Windows are 1-over-1 single-glazed sliding sash with horns.

The principal elevation faces north-east and is asymmetrically arranged. The front door is positioned to the right and is a timber door with four bolection-moulded panels and brass ironmongery, with a rectangular fixed light over. The door surround is smooth render rising to scrolled console brackets that support an entablature. To the left is a two-storey canted bay surmounted by a cast-iron parapet, with square-headed moulded surrounds and a continuous cill course to the first floor, and diminished flat-headed openings to the second floor. The first-floor window over the entrance has a moulded surround. The left elevation abuts 60 Queen's Parade and the right elevation abuts 62 Queen's Parade. The rear elevation is abutted by a two-storey pitched-roof return shared with the adjoining owner, which has a replacement single-glazed timber casement window on the ground floor. Replacement uPVC rainwater goods have been fitted throughout the rear.

To the front is a garden with a terracotta path running parallel to a lawn shared with the adjoining owner, accessed by communal steps with individual gates. The boundary is defined by a rubble masonry wall surmounted by stone coping and rendered piers, with historic urns positioned either side of the path. Landscaped public gardens to the north of the site offer views towards the marina. To the south, the site is bounded by Somerset Avenue, with alley access to the rear yard.

The house was built during a period of rapid development along this part of the seafront, driven by the increasing numbers of professional-class residents and holidaymakers attracted to Bangor following the opening of the railway in 1865. This terrace replaced an earlier row of single-storey cottages visible in a photograph dating from the 1870s. One of those earlier cottages was reportedly occupied by Thomas Whannell, whose two daughters married builders who worked on Bangor Castle. The area was previously known as the "Kinnegar," a reference to a coney — or rabbit — warren that occupied the site before development. The street was renamed Queen's Parade following a visit by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1903, and the change was recorded in the valuation records in 1907.

Although a small plaque on the house states it was built in 1883, this is not supported by the primary source evidence. The current owner holds a copy of amended elevations dated 3rd June 1878 showing the houses broadly as built, but with additional ornamentation to the roofline and door surround. These drawings are signed as approved by Somerset Ward, a son of Viscount Bangor and agent to the Bangor estates, suggesting that Viscount Bangor — the original landowner in the Princetown area — was seeking to exercise a degree of control over the quality of development. The road to the rear, Somerset Avenue, is named in connection with the Ward family, and the two-storey cottages built there show some stylistic echoes of the Queen's Parade houses. The current owner reports that these cottages were used as summer residences by the tenants of Queen's Parade, who moved to Somerset Avenue and let their own houses to summer visitors.

The pair first appears in the valuation records in 1878 as two newly-built vacant dwellings, leased from a John Clements and valued at £30 each. The valuer notes elsewhere in the Bangor records that houses valued at £30 and above were eligible for a first-class season railway ticket to Belfast, provided by the railway company under a scheme known as "Building Tickets" or "House Free" tickets, whereby the railway company and the property business mutually stimulated the growth of Bangor as both a resort and a commuter town. A marginal sketch in the valuation records confirms that the new houses were three-storey with a two-storey paired return and bays to the front facade. The valuation was reduced to £25 in 1886 and to £22 in 1906, probably as the result of an appeal, with rent noted as £30 per annum plus taxes.

Internal evidence suggests the house was completed in stages. A decorator's signature on a wall of an upper floor indicates that the upper rooms were not finished internally until 1881. Copies of the Belfast Newsletter dating from 1882, recovered from behind ground-floor window architraves, suggest that room too may not have been completed for some years after the house was first built.

John Clements, the developer, may have been a partner in Clements and Acheson, plumbers, gas fitters, brass founders and lead merchants with premises in Victoria Street, Belfast. A John Clements of Victoria Street is known to have had a connection with the Kinnegar area, being named as an executor in the will of William Campbell of Kinnegar, though the evidence that he was the developer of this site is not conclusive.

The first recorded occupant of number 61 is William A. Jamison in 1886. By 1901 the tenant was Charlotte E. Neill, a spinster aged 35, who ran the premises as a boarding house, though no boarders were recorded when she completed her census return in March of that year. Joseph Rea is recorded as occupier in 1906, and by the time of the 1911 census Elizabeth Heron was in residence — a spinster living alone on income from houses. The next recorded tenant is Amelia Hambley in 1928, who remained there at least until 1930. The house continues in use as a private dwelling.