23 Ann Street, Gilford, Craigavon, County Down, BT63 6HX

A mid-terrace house of two bays and two storeys, built around 1840–1850 and situated on Ann Street in Gilford, County Down, east of Gilford Mill and north of the town centre.

The building is square on plan, with a modern two-storey flat-roof return to the rear. The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles. A rendered chimney stack carries clay pots. Rainwater goods are cast-iron half-round to the front and uPVC to the rear. External walls are finished in painted ruled-and-lined render. All windows are replacement uPVC units set on projecting masonry sills.

The principal elevation faces east. At first-floor level there is a single window to the centre; at ground-floor level there is a half-panelled timber door to the right and a window to the left. The south elevation abuts the neighbouring property, as does the north elevation. The rear (west) elevation has a window at first-floor right and is partially obscured by the modern flat-roofed two-storey return, which includes a window to each floor and a timber-sheeted gate enclosing a rear yard. The cheeks of the return were not inspected.

The house sits on the main road through Gilford and forms part of a terrace of 25 dwellings on Ann Street, not counting the gate lodge at No. 1. There is vehicular access to the rear, and the boundary with the mill site is defined by mature trees.

This house was originally one of a terrace of back-to-back workers' houses built by the proprietors of the adjacent linen thread spinning mill, which was largely responsible for the growth and prosperity of Gilford throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The terrace is among the earliest housing associated with the mill company, which was originally known as Dunbar and Thompson and later traded as Dunbar McMaster & Co Ltd.

The mill itself had its origins in the ambitions of Hugh Dunbar, a descendant of a linen family whose grandfather had leased a property at Huntley from the Whytes of Loughbrickland, where Hugh was manufacturing thread and his hand-loom weavers produced linen cloth. By 1834, competition from mill-spun yarns produced by the new wet-spinning process forced Dunbar to either establish his own spinning mill or go out of business. He chose Gilford as the location for his new enterprise and entered into partnership with William Agnew Stewart and Robert Thompson to raise the necessary capital. Land was obtained from Hugh Law of Woodbank for the mill itself, and the tail race ran through the land of James Uprichard of Bannvale. The spinning mill opened in 1839 — as Dunbar and Thompson, Stewart having died in 1837 — and was an immediate success, drawing large numbers of workers into the town. Between 1841 and 1851 the population more than quadrupled, from 643 to 2,814. By 1870 the mill was employing over 2,000 workers. Dunbar took his responsibilities as an employer seriously, providing a medical attendant and a school, and built 200 houses for his workforce between 1836 and 1862. All mill-owned houses were inspected monthly, and were annually lime-washed, painted and repaired at the firm's expense.

The terrace was originally constructed as two rows of back-to-back houses. Numbers 9 to 26 fronted onto High Street, and to their rear, sharing a back wall, was a second row called Bann Street, which faced towards the linen mill. A view of the mill said to date from around 1841, shortly after its completion, shows the rear of the terrace as it then appeared, and both rows are shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, captioned 'High Street' and 'Bann St[reet]'.

These back-to-back houses have been described as "the most basic units available, having only two rooms with single windows at each floor they would have provided rather cramped living space for more than four occupants. The lack of rear doors and windows and the resultant reduction in ventilation was probably less critical in an open site which allowed unlimited circulation of fresh air. They were adequate for single occupation or smaller family units and would have been a considerable improvement on the poorer type of rural dwellings." The houses were often occupied by single people and couples without children, but it was not uncommon for these two-room dwellings to be home to a family of four or more. Valuation records and census returns show considerable mobility within the terrace, with many tenants living at two or more different addresses over the years.

The houses are listed in Griffith's Valuation of 1863 as the property of Dunbar McMaster & Co. The High Street houses were all valued at £2 10s, were two storeys, 15 feet long and 12 feet wide, and were rated as "deteriorated by age and not in good repair", suggesting they had been standing for some years by that date. The Bann Street houses to the rear were valued at £2 5s, despite being the same size.

The first tenants recorded at what is now No. 23 (then No. 24) were Catherine McCagherty in the High Street house and Joseph Carman in the Bann Street house. Subsequent tenants included Joseph Fullerton and Hugh Burns, both noted in 1902. The 1901 census records the High Street tenant as Joseph Fullerton, a carter from County Armagh living with his wife and two young sons, while the Bann Street house was occupied by Hugh Burns, a bleacher at the mill, living with his wife (a spinner), their young son, and Hugh's 12-year-old nephew who worked as a machine boy at the mill. By 1911, the High Street tenant was Rachel Davison, a 72-year-old widow living with her son, a shoemaker, while the Bann Street house was occupied by James McConville, a grocer's van-man, living with his wife (a flax spinner), their baby son, and James's 72-year-old father, an unemployed farm labourer.

In 1915–16, most of the Bann Street houses to the rear of the High Street row were incorporated into the front dwellings. However, this house and its neighbours towards the end of the terrace remained as back-to-back houses with two separate tenancies until the 1930s. The High Street side was subsequently occupied by Eliza McKeown until at least 1929, though no further tenants are recorded for the Bann Street portion up to that date. By 1937 the Bann Street house had been incorporated into the front dwelling, and the combined property was revalued at £5 in 1938, at which point it was described as a "good type parlour house" comprising a parlour, kitchen, scullery and two bedrooms, with the scullery and lavatory accommodated in a rear extension.

In 1879, following the imposition of a very high import tax on linen thread in the United States, Hugh Dunbar McMaster established a mill in Greenwich Village, New York, transporting workers and machinery from Ireland and installing his brother John as manager. The emigration of workers from Gilford had a profound effect on the town's population, which halved between 1871 and 1881, and many of the early occupants of these houses were likely among those who emigrated. Despite this, the company continued to thrive in Gilford and enjoyed a worldwide reputation. The British Trade Journal of 1890 reported that the firm exported "twine for salmon fishing to British Columbia, carpet threads, book-binder's threads, extra strong threads for leather and thick cloths and fine threads for the sewing-machinist and lace maker...to the United States, South and Central America, Brazil, Australia and the rest of the British Colonies." The owners maintained a paternalistic interest in their workers and in the life of the town throughout much of the 20th century. A decline in the Ulster linen industry eventually led to the mill's closure in the early 1980s.

The house continues in use as a dwelling. It forms part of a terrace of eighteen houses built around 1840, of interest chiefly for its historical association with Gilford Mill and as an example of mill workers' housing in the town. However, extensive alterations over the years have left little historic fabric remaining, and the building is no longer considered to be of special architectural or historic interest. It was removed from the statutory list in November 2013.