40 Meeting Street, Dromore, Banbridge, Co Down, BT25 1AA

40 Meeting Street, Dromore

A restored two-storey terraced house built around 1830, located on the south side of Meeting Street in Dromore town centre. The house forms part of a small terrace that represents a rare, if compromised, example of formalised urban vernacular from the late 18th or early 19th century outskirts of a small textile town.

The building is rectangular on plan with a two-storey return to the rear. It is rendered on the exterior with ruled-and-lined detailing over a smooth rendered plinth, and roofed in natural slate with blue and black angled ridge tiles and a red-brick chimney stack. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods are fitted to projecting eaves. Windows are replacement 6/6 timber-framed exposed box sash with projecting painted sills. The principal northeast-facing elevation displays two windows to each floor with a replacement timber-sheeted door positioned right of centre at ground floor level. The southeast and northwest elevations are abutted by adjoining buildings with higher ridge levels.

Although the house has been renovated, much of its early character and fabric survive. It can be positively identified on Annual Revision town plans dating from around 1861 onwards, though a terrace lining the southern side of Meeting Street was depicted on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, suggesting construction around that date. The dwelling would not have appeared in contemporary Townland Valuations as it fell below the £3 minimum threshold; it was valued at £2 10 shillings in Griffith's Valuation of 1861.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the property was occupied by working people employed in common professions. In 1861 it was owned by Samuel Adams and leased to Thomas Moreland, a general labourer. By 1901, Alexander Napier, a local blacksmith, occupied the house with his wife Jane, four children, and a blacksmith's apprentice; the census return described it as a second-class dwelling with six rooms, a shed, and a blacksmith's forge. In 1911, textile worker Thomas Clarke lived there; his sister-in-law was a seamstress. Robert Jess, a carpenter, occupied the property from 1915 until around 1930. By 1984, the house had fallen vacant and into disrepair, but has only recently been restored to use as a private dwelling. The building was listed in 1983.