53 Dunbarton Street, Gilford, CRAIGAVON, Co Down, BT63 6HJ

53 Dunbarton Street is an attached two-bay two-storey mid-terrace dwelling built around 1864. It forms the centre property of a terrace of three houses (also including Nos. 51 and 55) which together have significant group value. The terrace represents an increasingly rare example of small town housing from this period and retains much of its original fabric and architectural detailing.

The building is rectangular on plan with a pitched roof of natural slate topped with blue-black clay roll-top ridge tiles of ogee profile. The walls are rendered with ruled-and-lined finish over a painted chamfered plinth. Rainwater goods are cast iron, supported on paired brackets. Windows throughout are square-headed timber 6/6 sliding sashes with painted masonry sills.

The principal elevation faces north-east onto Dunbarton Street and comprises a square-headed entrance at the left containing a timber six-panelled door with a plain glazed overlight above. To the right are two ground-floor windows, with three windows at first-floor level positioned directly above. The north-west gable is abutted by the adjacent building (No. 55), and the south-east elevation is similarly abutted by its neighbour (No. 51). The south-west elevation was not surveyed. Access is taken directly from the street to the north, with an enclosed yard lying to the south.

The terrace was constructed on land leased from John Walsh McMaster, a partner in Dunbar McMaster & Co, the owners of Gilford Mill. The buildings first appear on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–2 and are recorded in the Annual Revisions of 1864, though they do not feature in Griffith's Valuation of 1863. The three houses were among 81 properties built between 1861 and 1871, a period of peak population growth in Gilford. In 1841 the town had 111 houses; by 1871 this had risen to 559. These particular dwellings are substantially larger than other mill-owned properties in the area and were typically occupied by schoolteachers. Their construction may have been prompted by the need to provide suitable accommodation for staff at the Mill School, opened in 1846, which fell between the grand mansions of the mill proprietors and the modest workers' dwellings elsewhere in the settlement.

The first recorded occupant in 1864 was Robert R McCausland. Subsequent residents included Mrs McMurray (1880) and Thomas McCullough (1894), a foreman mechanic from County Tyrone. By 1911 the house was in use as a post office, operated by postmistress Frances Hunter and her sister Marion, with a third sister employed as a National School Teacher. The post office remained in operation under the Hunters' management until at least 1930. The building is today privately owned and continues in domestic use.