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

19 Ann Street is a two-bay, two-storey mid-terrace house built around 1840–1850, situated on the main road through Gilford, east of Gilford Mill, and north of Gilford town centre. It forms part of a terrace of 25 dwellings on Ann Street (excluding the gatehouse at No. 1 Ann Street) and was originally constructed as part of a back-to-back housing complex built for workers at the adjacent linen thread spinning mill.

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

The principal elevation faces east: at first-floor level there is a single window to the centre, while at ground-floor level there is a half-panelled timber door with a square-headed overlight to the right and a window to the left. The south elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The west (rear) elevation has a window at first-floor right and is abutted at the left by the modern two-storey return, which has a metal door to the right enclosing the rear yard; the return itself contains one window at each floor level, and its left and right cheeks were not inspected at the time of survey. The north elevation is abutted by the adjoining building on that side. Vehicular access is available to the rear, and the boundary with the mill site is defined by mature trees.

The house is one of the earliest surviving examples of worker housing built by the proprietors of the Gilford linen thread spinning mill, originally established in 1839 under the name Dunbar and Thompson — later trading as Dunbar McMaster & Co. Ltd — and a hugely successful enterprise that was largely responsible for the growth and prosperity of Gilford throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

The terrace was originally constructed as two parallel rows of back-to-back houses. Numbers 9 to 26 fronted onto High Street, and sharing their back wall was a second row known as 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 this terrace as it then appeared, and both rows are recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, captioned "High Street" and "Bann St[reet]". The back-to-back arrangement was gradually dismantled: the majority of the rear Bann Street houses were incorporated into the corresponding High Street houses in 1915–16, although six remained in use until the 1930s.

The mill itself had its origins in the ambitions of Hugh Dunbar, a descendant of a linen-producing family. His grandfather had leased a property at Huntley from the Whytes of Loughbrickland, where Hugh had been manufacturing thread and employing hand-loom weavers to produce linen cloth. By 1834, competition from mill-spun yarns produced by the new wet-spinning process made it necessary for Dunbar either to establish his own spinning mill or face ruin. 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 land belonging to James Uprichard of Bannvale. The mill opened in 1839 as Dunbar and Thompson, Stewart having died in 1837. It was immediately successful and drew large numbers of workers to 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, and between 1836 and 1862 the company built 200 houses for its workforce. All mill-owned houses were inspected monthly, and were annually lime-washed, painted, and repaired at the firm's expense.

Hugh Dunbar, like many employers of his era, took his responsibilities seriously and the mill provided a structure of social welfare support including a medical attendant and a school. The back-to-back houses in Gilford 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." Despite this, it was not uncommon for these two-room dwellings to house a family of four or more. Valuation records and census returns show considerable mobility among tenants, with many individuals recorded at two or more addresses within the terrace over the years.

The houses are first shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 and 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 and measured two storeys, 15 feet long and 12 feet wide; they were rated as "deteriorated by age and not in good repair", indicating they had already been standing for some time. The Bann Street houses to the rear were valued slightly lower, at £2 5s, despite being the same size.

The first tenants recorded at what is now No. 19 (formerly No. 20) were John Harrison on the High Street side and Margaret Goodgood in the house fronting onto Bann Street. Subsequent tenants included Catherine McKeown (1902), Lizzie Parker (1902), and Lucinda Bains (1903). At the time of the 1901 census, the High Street house was occupied by Catherine McKeown, a 74-year-old widow who worked at the mill, while the rear Bann Street house was home to Lucinda Bains, an unmarried woman employed as a winder at the mill. By the time of the 1911 census, Catherine McKeown still occupied the High Street house but had retired, possibly benefitting from the recent introduction of the old-age pension. In the Bann Street house in 1911 lived John Houy, a linen bleacher at the mill, together with his wife, who worked as a sweeper at the mill, and their two children aged 11 and 4; a third child born to the couple had not survived. In 1916 the Bann Street house was incorporated into the front dwelling, which was subsequently revalued at £4 10s with a weekly rent of 3s 3d.

In 1879, following the imposition of very high import tariffs on linen thread in the United States, Hugh Dunbar McMaster established a mill in Greenwich Village, New York. Workers and machinery were brought over from Ireland, and Hugh's brother John was installed as manager. The resulting emigration of workers from Gilford had a very significant effect on the town's population, which halved between 1871 and 1881, and many of the early occupants of this terrace are likely to have been part of that exodus. The company nonetheless continued to thrive in Gilford for many years 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 building has been retained in use as a dwelling. It has undergone extensive alterations over the years, leaving little historic fabric remaining. While it is of local interest due to its relationship with Gilford Mill and as an example of mill workers' housing in the town, it is not considered among the best surviving examples of its type, and the extent of the alterations has reduced its architectural and historic significance to the point that it is no longer considered of special interest. It was removed from the statutory list on 1 November 2013.