2 Mourne View Terrace, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 3HJ

2 Mourne View Terrace is a two-bay, two-storey-with-attic Victorian mid-terrace house built around 1879, located on an elevated site to the west of Newry Road, south of Banbridge town centre in Co Down.

The house forms part of a terrace of five, all similarly well-preserved with much of the original architectural detailing intact. This group exemplifies late-Victorian terrace housing with proportions and detailing typical of the style, though the relatively late date and condition mean it is not among the best examples of the type.

The building has a rectangular plan with a two-storey canted bay rising to a canted dormer and a two-storey return to the rear. The pitched natural slate roof (with mineral fibre slates and modern rooflights to the rear slope) features blue and black angled ridge tiles, with a hipped roof to the attic dormer topped with leaded ridges and hips. A rendered chimneystack with moulded caps and clay pots rises from the structure. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods sit on dentilled eaves. The walling is painted smooth render with a dentilled moulded string course above the ground floor canted bay window.

The principal elevation faces east. The two-storey canted bay window with dormer to the left has windows on each face per floor: square-headed to the ground floor, camber-arched to the first floor, and round-arched to the dormer. To the right at first floor is a 2/2 camber-arched window. The ground floor features a replacement panelled-and-glazed timber door with an elliptical overlight beneath a hood mould with carved foliate stops. Windows throughout are primarily 1/1 timber sliding sash, with uPVC to the rear. The south elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The west (rear) elevation contains replacement uPVC windows on the ground and first floors to the right, with a two-storey return to the left (ridge level below the main block's eaves level). This return has various uPVC windows and a modern uPVC glazed door to the south elevation, a diminutive timber casement window in the gable, and a uPVC window to the ground floor. The north elevation has a 1/1 window with margin panes to the first floor left and is abutted by the adjoining building.

The house is set back from the street on an elevated site with a small front garden in shrubs, enclosed by a smooth rendered wall. A two-storey painted brick outbuilding stands in the rear yard (shared with an adjacent property), featuring two timber-sheeted doors and two 2/2 timber sliding sash windows with brick sills to the first floor.

The terrace was constructed in phases. Two houses were completed and inhabited by 1879, with a further three added in 1890, developed by local builder John Gordon. The terrace was originally named Mourne Terrace, becoming Mourne View from the 1920s onwards. According to local tradition, Gordon benefited financially from involvement in the Armagh rail disaster of 12 June 1889, which killed 80 people and injured 260, and used this money to complete the terrace, the construction of which had begun in the late 1870s.

Number two first appeared in valuation records in 1879 at £21, listed as a house, office and yard occupied by Anastasia Wilson and leased from John Gordon. Subsequent occupiers included Hugh W McCammon (1887), Thomas Pyper (1888), Walter S Davis (1892), and Margaret McMillan (1893). At the 1901 census, spinster Margaret McMillan ran it as a boarding house, accommodating two male bank clerks from Tyrone and Wicklow. By 1911, her lodger was a teacher from Dublin. Later residents included Bessie Holton (1918), Robert Hayes (1927), John T Gailey (undated), Bessie G Holton (1928), and William E Holton (1954).

During the First General Revaluation, the house was revalued at £24. The accommodation then comprised three bedrooms, two reception rooms, a bathroom, kitchen, pantry, and scullery. The owner, James Gordon, complained about the valuation, noting the house was poorly served to the rear with practically no rear access, had been built many years prior, and required significant annual expenditure on repairs. The valuer assessed it as a "good type terrace house on outskirts of town" but noted the lack of garden and inadequate space to drive a car to the rear. The house continues in residential use.