59 Queens Parade, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 3BH

59 Queens Parade, Bangor, County Down

This is a three-storey, two-bay, mid-terrace Victorian dwelling built around 1880, forming one of a semi-detached pair with the adjoining 60 Queens Parade (formerly recorded together). It sits on an elevated site on the Bangor promenade, adjacent to Marine Gardens, east of Bangor West and north of the town centre. The house retains its original character and detailing, and has group value with its pair. It is a good example of the larger terraces built in Bangor during the later 19th century following the arrival of the railway in 1865.

Architectural Description

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay crested ridge tiles and leaded hips over the projecting bay. Rainwater goods are cast-iron ogee gutters to the front (uPVC to the rear) and cast-iron circular downpipes. The rendered chimney-stack has cornice detailing and yellow clay pots. External walls are stucco rendered with plinth mouldings, string course, and corbel course. Windows are single-glazed 1/1 sliding sash with horns.

The principal elevation faces north-east and is asymmetrically arranged. The front door is positioned to the right, framed by smooth render surrounds rising to scroll console brackets supporting an entablature. It is a timber door with four moulded panels and a rectangular fixed light above. To the left is a two-storey canted bay with square-headed moulded surrounds and a continuous cill course at first-floor level, and diminished round-arched openings at second-floor level. A first-floor window sits above the entrance with a moulded surround.

The left elevation is abutted by 58 Queens Parade. The rear elevation is largely obscured but is abutted by a two-storey pitched-roof return projecting from the left-hand bay, with a two-storey hipped addition extending the full width of the site. Views from a distance suggest a timber sliding sash window to the rear facade. The right elevation is abutted by 60 Queens Parade.

Roofing: natural slate. Walling: stucco render. Windows: timber. Rainwater goods: cast-iron to the front, uPVC to the rear.

Setting

To the front there is a garden with a stepped concrete path running parallel to a lawn. The boundary is formed by a rubble masonry wall with a rendered coping and piers, fitted with a modern mild steel gate. 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 return. There is a small enclosed rear yard.

Historical Background

This part of Queens Parade was developed during the late 1870s and early 1880s to accommodate the growing numbers of professional-class residents and holidaymakers drawn to Bangor after the railway opened in 1865. The terrace replaced an earlier row of single-storey cottages visible in a photograph dating from the 1870s. One of those cottages is recorded as having been occupied by a Thomas Whannell, whose two daughters married builders who worked on Bangor Castle. The area was previously known as the Kinnegar, a name referring to a coney or rabbit warren that occupied the land before development. The street was renamed Queens Parade following a visit by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1903, a change reflected in valuation records by 1907. Most of the houses in the street were let to families of the professional or petit-bourgeois class, while others were run as boarding houses, as recorded in the 1901 and 1911 censuses. The terrace appears for the first time on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901, with the road in front still captioned "Kinnegar."

This house is one of a semi-detached pair dating from around 1880, built in a similar style to the adjoining pair to the west, though by a different developer and slightly later, with some minor differences in style and execution. The houses first enter valuation records in 1880, each described as "new," valued at £30, and initially listed as vacant. They replaced a cottage formerly on the site that had been valued at £2 10s.

The immediate lessor recorded in the valuation records is Joseph Ferguson, the likely developer. Ferguson was a Scotsman from Arbroath, a master mariner who lived in Mountcollyer Avenue, Belfast. From 1854 to 1862, as a newly-qualified master, he captained a ship called the Edwin Fox. That vessel initially served as a troop carrier during the Crimean War, then notoriously carried Chinese labourers to Cuba to work in the sugar plantations. While under Ferguson's command, the ship also transported convicts to Australia and pale ale to India. Around 1880 Ferguson appears to have settled, at least temporarily, in Bangor — the home town of his wife Agnes — and the couple had six children, at least four of whom were born there. It appears Ferguson built the houses in Queens Parade around the time his first child, Hester, was born, possibly intending them to provide an income for his family during his absences at sea. Letters of administration obtained by his widow record that Joseph Ferguson died "as is supposed on 25th December 1895 at Sea," and by 1901 the valuation records show that Agnes Ferguson had become the immediate lessor of both properties.

The current house was reduced in valuation to £25 in 1886 and to £22 in 1907, for reasons that are unclear, possibly as the result of an appeal. The rent charged was £32 plus taxes. The first recorded occupier was a Mrs Morgan in 1890. By 1901, widow Anna Hart lived there with her eight-year-old son and a sixteen-year-old servant girl; Hart had a private income from annuities and two visitors at the time of the census, one of them a hospital nurse from Dublin. By 1911 she had taken a boarder, an English widow aged 83. Fanny Crosbie is listed as occupier in 1915. By 1923, Isabel Ferguson — daughter of the original developer Joseph Ferguson — had moved in; she would have been around 38 at that time, and had been described as an office clerk in the 1901 census when she was sixteen. In 1924 her older sister Hester, who had previously worked as a milliner, joined her in the house.

The house remains in residential use and was undergoing renovation at the time of listing.