24 Meeting Street, Dromore, Banbridge, Co Down, BT25 1AQ

24 Meeting Street is a three-storey, two-bay terraced townhouse built around 1830, located on the south side of Meeting Street in the centre of Dromore, County Down. It forms a matched pair with the adjoining No. 26 (a separately listed building), and together the two properties represent a fine and largely intact example of the transitional architectural period between Georgian formalism and Victorian expressionism.

The house is rectangular in plan with a two-storey gabled return to the rear, set at an angle from mid-section. The roof is pitched natural slate with angled ridge tiles and a rendered chimneystack. Rainwater goods are mainly cast-iron half-round. The external walls are smooth render with banded rustication to the ground floor and raised quoins to the upper floors.

The windows are timber-framed sliding sashes: 3/6 pane with horns and projecting sills to the second floor; 6/6 pane with horns set within moulded architraves to the first floor; and boarded with projecting sills to the ground floor. Timber-framed casements serve the rear return.

The principal elevation faces northeast and is three openings wide at each floor. To the right of the ground floor is an elliptical-headed doorcase in a moulded surround, comprising a recessed four-panelled timber door flanked by Doric columns and surmounted by a plain canopy and a segmental-headed transom light. The threshold is finished in geometric tiles. The southeast elevation is abutted by No. 26. The southwest rear elevation projects slightly to the left and is abutted at centre by the angled two-storey return. The rear has two windows to the second floor and one to the first floor right (currently without glazing); the return has timber casement windows to the first floor and is boarded at ground floor level. The building faces the street, with a yard to the rear accessed via a carriage-arch entrance belonging to the neighbouring property.

The house was constructed in the early to mid-19th century. Two buildings on the current site are visible on the Townland Valuation town plan of Dromore of around 1830, which also shows that No. 24 did not yet have its two-storey rear return at that date. In the 1830s the Townland Valuation of Drumbroneth recorded the property as being valued at £4 4s. and occupied by a Mr Thomas Johnston. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1861, the value had risen to £9, mirroring a similar increase at the adjoining No. 26. This rise suggests the buildings were either reconstructed or significantly modified between around 1830 and 1861. The presence of Victorian features — particularly the window mouldings — on what are otherwise Georgian-proportioned houses supports the view that Nos. 24 and 26 were built or substantially altered after 1830. The two-storey rear return at No. 24 is not original to the house but was likely added in the late 19th century; it appears on an Annual Revision town plan of Dromore dated 1906 to around 1935.

By 1861 the property had passed to Mr Hugh Frazer, a carpenter who had previously resided at the adjoining No. 26. Frazer held the property on lease from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who at the time were the largest landowning body in Ireland. He continued to live at No. 24 until his death in 1876, by which point his will records his occupation as cabinet maker. On his death the property passed to Adam Watson, a grocer and provisions merchant, who purchased it outright. Watson was soon replaced by Robert Humphries, who vacated in 1893, after which the house changed hands sporadically over the following decade. The 1901 census records it as home to Francis Preston (aged 59, Episcopalian), a local linen merchant, and his family, describing it as a second-class dwelling of seven rooms. By 1911 Adam Watson had returned as owner and leased the property to a Mr Hugh Watson, employed at the local post office. The Watson family remained at No. 24 until at least 1930.

In 1969 the architectural historian C. E. B. Brett described Meeting Street as "one of the best places left in Ulster to catch the flavour of the late 18th or early 19th century outskirts of a small textile town," and described Nos. 24 and 26 specifically as "a good pair of larger houses, three-storey, one of two bays [No. 26] and one of three [No. 24], with glazing bars complete, of well painted stucco, the ground floor rusticated. No. 24 has an arched doorcase with Tuscan columns." The two properties were listed in 1983. Since that time No. 24 has fallen vacant. The building lies within a conservation area.