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

5 Mourne View Terrace, Banbridge

A two-bay two-storey-with-attic Victorian end-terrace house built around 1890, situated on an elevated site on the west side of Newry Road, south of Banbridge town centre. It forms part of a terrace of five similar dwellings, all well-preserved with substantial architectural detailing intact. The terrace exemplifies late-Victorian proportions and detailing, though it is relatively late in date and not among the finest examples of the type.

The house 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 is finished with blue and black angled ridge tiles; the attic dormer has a hipped roof with leaded ridges and hips. A rendered chimneystack with moulded caps and clay pots rises from the roof. 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. Windows throughout are timber 1/1 sliding sash, with round-arched windows to the dormer and camber-arched windows to the first floor, which have continuous sills to the canted bay. The principal elevation faces east, featuring the two-storey canted bay with a dormer to the left; windows to each face on each floor are square-headed at ground level and camber-arched above, becoming round-arched at dormer level. To the right is a first-floor window and at ground floor a replacement panelled-and-glazed timber door surmounted by an elliptical overlight and hood mould with carved foliate stops. The south elevation is blank. The north elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The front garden is set back from the street, enclosed by a smooth rendered wall with flagstones and a replacement tile path.

The terrace was built by local developer John Gordon, with two houses completed and inhabited by 1879 and a further three added in 1890. According to a current resident, John Gordon received a substantial payment following his involvement in the Armagh rail disaster of 12 June 1889, in which 80 people were killed and 260 injured, and this money enabled him to complete the terrace whose construction had begun in the late 1870s. Originally named Mourne Terrace, it became known as Mourne View from the 1920s.

The first resident recorded in valuation records was Thomas Crothers in 1890, when the house was valued at £21 and leased from John Gordon. William Kennedy occupied the house from 1899 and his wife gave birth to a son there in August 1899. Elizabeth Gill, a widow from Newtownards, took residence in 1903. In 1901 she was recorded living with six adult children, the eldest a medical student and four others working in the boot and shoe trade. By 1911 she remained with two of her children, her son William working as a boot merchant, along with her married daughter and two grandchildren. William F Gill, boot merchant, occupied the house from 1922 and James Gordon from 1929, likely a descendant of the original developer. The house remained in the Gordon family until at least 1957.

A garden was added to the plot in 1934, raising the valuation by £2. In the early 1930s the house was revalued at £26. The ground floor comprised a lobby, front reception with bay, kitchen and scullery. The first floor contained a large bay-fronted reception, one middle bedroom, one small bedroom at the back, bathroom and separate WC. The top floor held a large attic bedroom with a full-depth dormer window at front and skylight at back, and one small box room. There was an enclosed yard with offices and a garden plot to the side, with a store at the back of the yard noted as convertible to a garage, and a glass house in the garden. The valuer in 1936 described it as a well-built house in very fair condition and modernised, noting it was the only house in the row with a garden. James Gordon's 1935 appeal against valuation noted the small frontage and the spoiling of the garden by electricity board poles and wiring. The house continues in use as a domestic dwelling.