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

62 Queen's Parade is a three-storey, two-bay Victorian end-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 originally constructed as one of a semi-detached pair with the adjoining 61 Queen's Parade, and now forms part of a larger terrace. The building retains its original character and robust detailing, and has group value with its pair. It is a good example of the larger terrace dwellings that formed part of Bangor's development in the later 19th century following the arrival of the railway in 1865.

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and leaded hips over the projecting bay, with replacement slate to the rear pitch. Rainwater goods consist of cast-iron ogee gutters. There is a rendered chimney-stack with yellow clay pots. The walls are finished in stucco render with plinth mouldings, a string course, and a corbel course. Windows are 1/1 double-glazed sliding sash with horns. The principal entrance features a timber door with four bolection-moulded panels and replacement ironmongery, with a rectangular fixed light above.

The principal elevation faces north-east and is asymmetrically arranged. The front door is positioned to the left, with smooth render surrounds rising to scroll console brackets that support an entablature. To the right is a two-storey canted bay surmounted by a cast-iron parapet, with square-headed moulded surrounds and a continuous cill course at first-floor level, and diminished flat-headed openings at second-floor level. A first-floor window over the entrance has a moulded surround. A date plaque on the building has been altered from "1888" to read "1883", though neither date is accurate.

The left elevation is abutted by 61 Queen's Parade. The rear elevation adjoins a two-storey pitched-roof return shared with the adjoining owner, finished in artificial slate with a modern roof light to the left-hand side. Rainwater goods to the rear are replacement uPVC ogee-style guttering, with cast-iron downpipes and a soil and vent pipe. The rear chimney, centrally located on the rear face, has been removed above eaves level. The right gable elevation is symmetrically arranged with window openings at first- and second-floor levels; the right-hand windows have been replaced with uPVC units.

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 formed by a rubble masonry wall surmounted by stone coping and rendered piers, with historic urns positioned either side of the path. Landscaped public gardens lie to the north of the site, with views towards the marina. To the south, the site is bounded by Somerset Avenue, with alley access to the rear yard.

Roofing is natural slate, walling is stucco render, windows are a mix of timber and uPVC, and rainwater goods are a combination of uPVC and cast-iron.

This part of Queen's Parade was developed during the late 1870s and early 1880s to serve the increasing numbers of well-to-do middle-class residents and holidaymakers attracted to Bangor following the opening of the railway in 1865. The terrace replaced an earlier row of single-storey cottages visible in a photograph dating from the 1870s. According to local historian M. Patton, one of these cottages was occupied by Thomas Whannell, whose two daughters married builders who worked on Bangor Castle. The area was then 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. The majority of houses in the street were let to families of the professional or petit-bourgeois class, while others were operated as boarding houses, as evidenced by the 1901 and 1911 census returns. The third-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901 is the first to show the terrace, with the road still captioned "Kinnegar" at that stage. Historic large-scale maps, including the valuation town plan covering the period 1898 to 1916, caption the houses "Emmaville", a name they still bear today.

This house is one of a semi-detached pair dating from roughly the same period, around 1878, as "Bowman Terrace" to the east. Although the houses bear a small plaque stating they were built in 1883, this date is not supported by primary source evidence, which indicates construction somewhat earlier. 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. The drawings are signed "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 attempting to exercise a degree of control over the quality of development. A road to the rear of Queen's Parade is named Somerset Avenue, and the two-storey cottages built there display some stylistic echoes of the Queen's Parade houses. The current owner states that these cottages were used as summer residences by the tenants of Queen's Parade, who would retire to Somerset Avenue and allow their own houses to be let to summer visitors.

The pair first enters the valuation records in 1878 as two newly built vacant dwellings leased from John Clements and valued at £30. The valuer noted 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 — a scheme known as "Building Tickets" or "House Free" tickets, through which the railway company and the property business mutually stimulated the growth of Bangor as a resort and commuter town. A marginal sketch in the valuation records shows the new houses as three-storey with a two-storey paired return and bays to the front façade. A decorator's signature on the wall of an upper floor of number 61 indicates that the upper rooms were not finished internally until 1881. Copies of the Belfast Newsletter dating from 1882, recovered from behind window architraves on the ground floor, suggest that this room too was not completed internally for some years after the house was first built. The valuation of the houses was reduced to £25 in 1886 and to £22 in 1906, probably as the result of an appeal; it is noted that the rent was £30 per annum plus taxes.

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 Kinnegar, being named as an executor in the will of William Campbell of Kinnegar, though the evidence is not conclusive that he was the developer of this site.

The first occupant recorded at number 62 is William F. Boyce in 1880. The house experienced some periods of vacancy, but by 1901 the tenant was John M. Dailey, a master tailor from County Monaghan who lived there with his wife and three children. He is likely to have been a partner in Clarke and Dailey, tailors and clothiers, with premises in Chichester Street, Belfast. In 1908 the tenant was Samuel Y. Coulter, and at the time of the 1911 census Isabel Marshall was in residence with her sister Jane. Both sisters lived on interest from investments and, unusually for those of a Presbyterian background in that era, were able to speak Irish as well as English. Agnes Hearst is recorded as tenant from 1914 until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930. The house is currently let to holidaymakers and other temporary residents.