6 Victoria Road, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 5EX

6 Victoria Road is a two-bay, two-and-a-half storey mid-terrace house, one of a terrace of four, built around 1870 to designs by Robert Neill. It is situated at the south end of Victoria Road, close to Bangor Marina and Bangor town centre.

The building is square on plan with a three-storey return to the rear. The roof is pitched and clad in natural slate, with a painted render chimneystack fitted with terracotta pots. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods are carried on a timber fascia on projecting eaves. External walls are finished in painted smooth render. Windows are predominantly timber sliding sash with projecting masonry sills, though uPVC windows have been introduced to the rear. A canted oriel window at first floor level to the right of the principal elevation is a distinctive and largely intact feature; it carries a plain entablature, is supported on timber brackets, and has generally margin-paned lights.

The principal elevation faces north and is two openings wide at ground and first floor, narrowing to a single opening in the gablet, which has an apex board. The front door is a notable feature: it has two elongated bolection-moulded panels with a beaded muntin and brass door furniture, set within lesene strips beneath a dentilled entablature carried on decorative console brackets. An Ulster History Circle blue plaque is fixed to this elevation, reading: "Colin Middleton 1910–1983 Artist lived here."

The east elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The exposed section of the rear elevation has single windows to each floor, with the remainder abutted by a three-storey rear return whose eaves level is lower than the main block. The rear return has a pitched roof — the right half of which is shared with the neighbouring building — with natural Bangor slates and a chimney stack on the ridge at the gable end. The return's east elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The south elevation of the return has a single 1/1 uPVC window at second floor level and is otherwise blank. The west elevation of the return has a single 1/1 uPVC window at second floor, three windows at first floor (the central one diminutive), and at ground floor a window to the left and a replacement timber door to the right. The west elevation of the main block is abutted by the adjoining building. The rear yard is completely enclosed by a high masonry wall. To the west is Tower House.

The terrace first appears in valuation records in 1870, the houses having replaced three lower-value dwellings and initially valued at £18. The valuation rose to £22 in 1871, at which point all four houses were vacant and leased from Robert Neill, the developer. By 1872 all houses were listed as occupied by Robert Neill himself, who by then leased them from Robert E. Ward. The valuation dropped to £21 in 1873, possibly following an appeal. The unusual arrangement of a single occupier across all four houses persisted for some years, continuing even after the property passed to another member of the family, Charles Neill, in 1883. A likely explanation is that Robert Neill used the houses to accommodate his employees, who would not therefore have paid rent and may not have been in continuous occupation.

Robert Neill was a Bangor-based ship-owner and coal merchant. He is listed in the Mercantile Navy List and Maritime Directory for 1867 as the owner of a ship named Just, registered in Belfast. According to Patton, Neill's cargo boats were among the two chief companies operating from Bangor in the 1860s, running to and from Neill's Pier off Quay Street, where the coal depot was situated, a short distance from the terrace. The pier was purchased by the council in 1931, cleared of coal sheds, and renamed the South Pier. Robert Neill's son Charles, also a coal merchant, died in 1893 and left his property — including this terrace — to his wife Olivia.

The valuation was reduced to £18 in 1886 and from 1899 the terrace was recorded in the valuation records under the name Tower Buildings, with a further reduction in value to £16. The houses are listed as the property of Olivia Neill from 1899. From 1901 onwards the tenants of each individual house began to be noted separately, which may indicate that the properties were no longer being used as accommodation for the firm of Robert Neill and Son. The occupant of the current house was William Yates in 1901, followed by Victor Ferguson (1908), Charles Neill (1914), John McClure (1920), and John Elder (1930).

During the Second World War the property was used as a boarding house, and owner information suggests that Clark Gable, the American film actor, stayed at the house and was photographed leaning on the fireplace, with the photograph appearing in the local newspaper, the Spectator. The relevant issue could not be located to confirm this. Gable spent much of 1943 stationed at RAF Polebrook in Northamptonshire, flying combat missions with the aim of producing a recruitment film for aircraft gunners, but no reference could be found to a visit to Northern Ireland.

In 1973 the house became the home of the artist Colin Middleton (1910–1983), landscape and figure painter. The son of a damask designer, Middleton trained as an apprentice in his father's firm while studying at Belfast College of Art under Newton Penprase in his spare time. He took over the family business in 1935 but was able to devote himself full-time to painting from 1947. Between 1954 and 1970 he taught art at Belfast College of Art, Coleraine Technical School, and Friends' School Lisburn. Strongly influenced by Van Gogh, he once described himself as the only Surrealist painter working in Ireland, though he also worked confidently in cubist and expressionist styles and was described as "without doubt one of the few Irish painters who can claim more than local significance." He was awarded an MBE in 1969, elected a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1970, and received an honorary M.A. from Queen's University in 1972. He began exhibiting in 1938 with the Royal Hibernian Academy. A solo exhibition was held at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery in 1943, followed by a show at the Waddington Galleries, Dublin in 1949. He subsequently exhibited internationally, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in 1951 and at several London galleries including the Royal Academy. A major retrospective of nearly 300 works was held in 1976 at the Ulster Museum and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin. The Dublin Magazine wrote of him in 1955: "Apart from the brilliance of his paint, he has one rare quality in his inexhaustible capacity for wonder."

The house continues in use as a dwelling.