80 Church Street, Dromore, Banbridge, Co Down, BT25 1AA

80 Church Street is the eastern portion of a substantial semi-detached Victorian town house, built around 1860 on the north side of Church Street, west of Dromore town centre. It was originally constructed as a single dwelling together with the adjoining number 82 (a listed building in its own right), and the two properties were subdivided in the mid-20th century. Despite this subdivision, the original internal layout remains legible throughout, and a good deal of historic fabric and architectural detailing survives intact. The house is a good example of a substantial Victorian town house reflecting the development of Dromore during that period.

The building has a rectangular plan with a two-storey canted bay to the south, a two-storey return and a gabled stair-bay to the rear, these connected by a single-storey lean-to extension. The roof is hipped natural slate with leaded ridges and red-brick chimneystacks fitted with clay pots; the gable of the stair-bay has decorative bargeboards. Rainwater goods are cast-iron ogee profile, carried on bracketed timber eaves with sheeted soffits. External walls are painted smooth render on a contrasting plinth with raised quoins.

The windows are 2-over-2 timber-framed sash with projecting painted sills. First-floor windows have chamfered edges and a keyblock; ground-floor windows to the canted bay have decorative pilaster jambs and moulded surrounds. The facade as a whole is symmetrical when read together with number 82, with two-storey canted bays flanking a central entrance bay. Number 80 occupies the right-hand portion and is four openings wide; number 82 is three openings wide to the left.

The principal elevation faces south. The original entrance, now forming part of number 80, sits beneath a timber veranda carried on slender cast-iron columns with ornate spandrel brackets and a balustrade — one of the building's most notable features. The entrance itself comprises a raised-and-fielded four-panelled timber door with brass door furniture, flanked by half-panelled sidelights and a transom, all with etched and painted glass panels set within a decorative dog-tooth door frame. The far left and right bays each have two windows at each floor level. The west elevation is abutted by the adjoining number 82.

The rear (north) elevation has a two-storey gabled extension to the left with multi-paned windows to ground and first floor. At the re-entrant angle is a small entrance porch containing a panelled-and-glazed timber door accessed by a set of timber steps. To the right, at the centre of the elevation, the projecting gabled stair-bay has a segmental-headed stairwell opening with a keyblock, inset with a Venetian etched and painted glass window with margin panes — another of the building's most distinctive interior features. A single-storey lean-to extension connects the two rear bays and has a half-panelled timber door to the right and two windows to the left. The east gable is abutted by a modern two-storey dwelling of no architectural interest.

The setting is suburban, on the outskirts of the town. The house is set back from the road with a lawned garden to the front and mature trees at the entrance. The boundary to the road is a rendered plinth wall with hedgerow and square gate piers with pointed caps supporting metal gates. The rear garden is raised and set on a slope. The addition of an inappropriate modern two-storey extension has compromised the setting, though the pair of houses as a whole retains considerable original historic fabric.

The property has a well-documented history. An earlier dwelling occupied approximately the same footprint and appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 and the Townland Valuation map of around 1830, when it was recorded as the property of a Mrs Elizabeth Stephenson and valued at £22. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1861, the property had been rebuilt in its current form and its value had risen sharply to £56; it was at that time in the possession of a Mr John Harrison Junior, who held it from the Trustees of the Dromore Diocesan and Widows Fund. Harrison also operated a shirt-front factory to the south-east of the dwelling, which was demolished sometime after 1973 when it last appeared on the Ordnance Survey map.

Between 1864 and 1878 the valuation records are missing, but by the end of that period the site value had risen considerably to £135, reflecting John Harrison's construction of a large hemstitching factory to the north-east of the house. Bassett's Directory of County Down (1886) records that Harrison was a Justice of the Peace for County Down, that the house was then known as Mariville, and that his firm, John Harrison and Co., established around 1871, carried out tamboring, hemming, and finishing of cotton handkerchiefs for leading commission and shipping houses in Manchester, Glasgow, and Belfast, employing approximately 350 workers paid on a piece-rate basis, the majority living in the town.

Harrison vacated Mariville around 1895. From 1897 the house was occupied by Dr Marshall Weir, a surgeon, who had moved following the purchase of his former property by the Cathedral Church of Christ the Redeemer for use as a Rectory. Weir did not take possession of the former hemstitching factory, and the site was accordingly split in valuation terms, with Mariville revalued at £50. The 1901 Census records Weir (aged 70, Church of Ireland) residing at Mariville with his wife Jane (aged 68) and four adult daughters; the building return described it as a first-class dwelling with 13 rooms and outbuildings including a stable, a turf house, and a fowl house. Weir died in 1903, and the house remained vacant until 1909 when a Mr David James Spence took possession; the value was then reduced to £30. Spence, recorded in the 1911 Census as a linen merchant (aged 45, Methodist), lived there with his wife Adelaide (aged 40) and two infant children. The Spence family remained at Mariville until 1923, after which the property was occupied sporadically by a number of tenants until the end of the valuation records in 1930.

The house was converted into its present two dwellings in the mid-20th century. Number 80 comprises the eastern portion, retaining the original entrance beneath the Victorian cast-iron veranda; number 82 is accessed via a porch added to the west gable. In 1974, the architectural historian C. E. B. Brett described the buildings as "a good pair of large early Victorian stucco two-storey houses under a single hipped roof; eleven bays in all; canted bay windows linked by a balcony carried on iron columns with arches and curly detailing." The houses were listed in 1977 and remain in residential use. A modern two-storey dwelling (number 78) was attached to the east gable before 1973, when it first appears on the Ordnance Survey map. John Harrison's former hemstitching factory to the north-east was demolished after 1973 to make way for the creation of the adjoining Church View.