36 Church Street, Dromore, Co Down, BT25 1AA

36 Church Street is a symmetrical three-bay two-storey terraced red-brick building with a recessed arcaded ground floor, now divided into apartments. Built c.1890 as living accommodation for the cathedral sexton, it stands on the north side of Church Street in Dromore town centre, directly opposite Dromore Cathedral Church of Christ the Redeemer.

The building displays decorative Victorian brickwork typical of its era, including toothed and herringbone patterned detailing to the gable. It is constructed in English garden wall bond on a red-brick plinth. The roof is pitched natural slate with blue and black angled ridge tiles and tall red-brick chimneystacks, plain timber bargeboards to the gable, and timber fascia at eaves with exposed rafter tails. Plastic rainwater goods are fitted to projecting timber eaves; cast-iron downpipes and cast-iron half-round guttering serve the rear. The principal south-facing elevation has a central gable with two first-floor windows and an arcaded ground floor arrangement. The arcade features a semi-circular headed central opening containing the doorway, flanked by two elliptical-headed openings with lugged impost mouldings and chamfered edges. First-floor windows are five-paned timber-framed side-hung casements in square-headed timber architraves with moulded sill course. Ground-floor windows are segmental-headed with chamfered, partially tiled sills. Replacement timber and uPVC casements appear to the rear.

The north (rear) elevation has windows to each floor and a two-storey flat-roof return with single-storey flat-roof porch to the re-entrant angle. A detached slated red-brick garage with timber-sheeted doors stands in the rear yard, originally the rent office of the estate agent. The west gable is abutted by a narrow modern red-brick slated infill adjoining a late-twentieth century terraced house; the east gable is similarly abutted by an adjacent building.

The building's history is well documented. The site held structures shown on the 1833 Ordnance Survey map, but the present building first appears in valuation records in 1891 as a house and yard valued at £10, let by George Brush, agent to the Third Earl of Clanwilliam. William Guiney, the cathedral sexton, occupied it from 1893. In 1901, census returns show Guiney, then 61, lived in the four-room house with his wife and three adult daughters, two of whom worked as hemstitchers. The house subsequently passed to Joseph Flanagan, another cathedral sexton, in 1911. His household comprised his wife and five children; his eldest daughter was a hemstitcher and his 15-year-old son a message boy. By the 1930s, valuation records indicate the house was held rent-free by the cathedral sexton's office, with the Cathedral Trustees as owners. At that time it contained four bedrooms, a parlour, kitchen, and the former rent office serving as storage for church pews. Frederick McMurray occupied it in 1952 and Edward Monk in 1964.

The building was substantially altered during conversion to apartments c.1980, with slight extensions to west and east. Replacement fenestration, entrance doors, revised floor plans, and interior refurbishment have significantly compromised its original character. The ground-floor carriage arch on the east side, shown on the town plan as originally open, was infilled to increase internal accommodation. Extensive modern alteration has left limited special architectural merit.

The building is set street-fronted with a small enclosed rear garden, now part of a predominantly late-twentieth century terrace of two-storey rendered houses. Access to the rear is via Church View, a modern courtyard housing development, with the rear yard enclosed by a modern timber gate.