Gilford Library, 37 Mill Street, Gilford, Co Down, BT63 6HY

Gilford Library, 37 Mill Street, Gilford

This is a four-bay, three-storey house with basement, built around 1834 in the Victorian idiom. It stands on a rectangular plan with a single-storey rear return, set back from the main street at a prominent central position in the village of Gilford, adjacent to the junction of Castle Hill, Mill Street and Dunbarton Street. Although the building retains its general proportions and massing, it has undergone significant alteration resulting in substantial loss of historic fabric, both internally and externally.

Exterior

The roof is a pitched replacement of clay pantiles with clay ridge tiles; the original slates and copings were removed after the first survey in 1977. Rainwater goods throughout are replacement extruded metal. The chimneys have been replaced in modern brick, and the central chimney has been removed entirely. The walls are of brick laid in Flemish bond with raised granite long-and-short quoins at the corners. The gable ends are partly of rubble masonry with some modern block infill, and the rear elevation and rear return are finished in cement roughcast render.

Windows are 6/6 timber sliding sash without horns to the ground and first floors, and 3/6 sliding sash to the second floor. Painted masonry cills are used throughout, with cambered one-and-a-half brick arches over each opening.

Principal (north-east) Elevation

The upper floors are symmetrically arranged, but the ground floor has been significantly altered. The original entrance has been replaced by a modern flat-roofed porch with pebble-dashed walling and a modern timber panelled door with replica glazing, positioned left of centre. The two original windows to the right of the entrance have been removed and replaced by a single-storey flat-roofed projecting bay containing four twelve-pane windows to the front elevation, separated by thick mullions, and a single twelve-pane window to each cheek. The left-hand ground-floor window remains in its original position. A solid pattress plate is located centrally between the first and second floors.

South-East Gable

This gable is asymmetrically arranged, with a single window to the left at ground-floor level and a 3/6 sliding sash window directly above at first-floor level. There are significant signs of repair and alteration to the masonry and brickwork, including evidence of rebuilding from eaves level upwards.

Rear Elevation

The rear is asymmetrically arranged. At second-floor level, there is a replacement casement window right of centre, and a diminutive replacement window at first-floor level adjacent to a pattress plate. The single-storey, gable-ended rear return has a pantile roof and sits over a basement. It has two casement windows to the south-east cheek and two sliding sash windows to the south-west cheek over a services access point. The gable of the return is blank and is abutted by a small lean-to with a profiled metal roof.

South-West Gable

This gable is also asymmetrically arranged. Two replacement casement basement windows sit at the base. To the right are single windows at ground, first, and second floors, the second-floor window being a 3/6 sliding sash. A rubble masonry wall abuts to the left.

Setting

The building is set back from the building line of its neighbours. A small garden with trees occupies the front, accessed through a modern galvanised gate with matching railings. A bus shelter stands on the footpath directly in front of the principal elevation. To the rear, the building is enclosed by yards belonging to adjacent properties.

Historical Background

The house and an associated mill to the rear — now demolished — were built around 1834 during the boom years of linen production, constructed by Hugh Law as part of a wider redevelopment of a mill complex around which Gilford had grown during the second half of the 17th century.

The history of the site reaches back to the foundation of Gilford itself. The town takes its name from Captain John Magill, a Cromwellian officer of Scottish origin who was in Ireland before the rebellion of 1641, having purchased land in Ballynagarrick in 1639. Following the rebellion, Magill acquired several further townlands, including Loughans and Drumaran, where Gilford now stands. He is believed to have built the first water corn mill on or near the present site. Surviving deeds show that the corn mill and tuck mill — the latter used for the felting and scouring of woollen cloth — were conveyed by Sir John Magill, Captain Magill's grandson, to Thomas Purdy in 1691. Further deeds record that the mill passed to the Law family in the early 1780s. By 1796, a deed of conveyance names George Law, linen draper of Hazelbrook, as owner of the corn mill. George Law absorbed the property and businesses of the Purdy family, including the corn and tuck mill, and constructed a new beetling mill to the south of Gilford Castle. He erected a new weir and widened the mill-race to increase production, a development thought to have begun attracting further entrepreneurs to the town.

In 1825 the mill and mill lands passed to Hugh Law, who became tenant at nearby Woodbank. By 1831 he had built a new mill slightly to the north of the old one. A surviving elevation drawing shows it to have been an eleven-bay, five-storey structure, 114 feet long and 25 feet wide. The Townland Valuation lists the mill as the property of "Mr Hugh Law & Co", though it subsequently passed to a Mr Henry Mearne — presumably as tenant — when it is described as a "thread and yarn manufactory, stores and offices" valued at £34.

The house does not appear on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, which captions the mill as "Corn Mills", but it is shown on the Townland Valuation town plan of around 1834 and recorded in the Townland Valuation fieldbook as the residence of Hugh Law, described as a house measuring 49 by 48 by 25.6 feet. The house is first shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, by which time the mill extended from it to the rear. A large-scale valuation map of the town also shows a stream running beneath the mill building, with water collected into a mill pond to the south.

Hugh Law's reputation for generosity within the community was noted in the Belfast Newsletter of 8th June 1832, which recorded that he had "with his usual liberality, had given lime and brushes gratis to have the entire village whitewashed" during an outbreak of fever, and had "expended some thousands of pounds in the improvement of the town, and in giving employment to its poor inhabitants."

In the late 1830s, Hugh Dunbar of Dunbar and Thompson — later Dunbar McMaster — purchased land from Hugh Law to build his own mill. Law's former mill subsequently became a dyeing house and drying loft for spun yarn, valued in Griffith's Valuation at £23. The adjoining house was valued at £30 and was at that time occupied by Henry Heron, though it is unclear whether the occupant retained any connection with the Dunbar McMaster business.

Subsequent recorded occupants of the house include I. M. Benson (1864), Thomas Frazer (1875), H. R. McCausland (1878), Matthew Luke (1890), Dr James M. Browne (1894), Robert Martin (1902), William Gore (1905), Moses Kinlay (1908), Christopher Boyle (1926), John Constables (1927), W. A. McConnell (1929), and John Higgins (1937). The 1901 census records Robert Martin, an iron turner, living in the house with his wife, four young children, and his mother-in-law, Jane Kinley, while the mill to the rear was unoccupied. By 1911, Moses Kinley — a farmer and former flesher — was living in the house with his daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter. Outbuildings at that time included stables, a coach house, a cow house, a calf house, a piggery, and a potato house, suggesting the property had by then taken on the character of a farmhouse rather than a gentleman's residence.

The dyeing house and drying lofts to the rear continued in use by Dunbar McMaster until approximately 1940 and were finally deleted from the record and demolished in 1951. At the time of the First General Revaluation in the early 1930s, the occupier was William A. McConnell, who leased the house from the McMaster family. The house had thirteen rooms and was revalued at £9 5s., with a rent of £20 yearly free of taxes, later rising to £25. The valuer noted that the house was "much too big for requirements and is in a poor position for so large a house," with the present tenant occupying only five rooms and the third floor considered superfluous.

From 1937, the house served as the town post office under postmaster John Higgins. A room at the front on the north side was used as the post office, with a sorting office to the rear. The ground floor contained a kitchen with a small range, a bath, a WC, and a lumber room; the drawing room and a bedroom were on the first floor; and two further bedrooms and a box room were on the second floor. The house had electric light and well water. The tenant had installed the bath and WC at his own expense, and the owner had recently repainted and redecorated the whole house, though the valuer noted it was an old house "and the fabric is showing signs of wear." The valuation was raised to £13 in 1936 and to £16 in 1941. By 1951 the building was in use as a dwelling house and shop, let to Sydney Spence at 7 shillings and 6 pence per week.

In the 1970s the building became Gilford Library, a use it retains today, though it was reported as facing the threat of closure as recently as 2011. The overall presence of the building contributes to the character and wider historic context of the village, though it is not considered among the best examples of its type, and its interest has been significantly compromised by the extent of alterations carried out over the course of the 20th century.