8 Bannview Terrace, Gilford, CRAIGAVON, County Down, BT63 6HX

8 Bannview Terrace is a two-storey, four-bay end-of-terrace house located on Dunbar Street in Gilford, County Down. The current structure was rebuilt circa 1980 by the Housing Executive, replicating an original terrace block that dated from circa 1865.

The original terrace formed part of Gilford's rapid expansion following the opening of the Dunbar McMaster spinning mill in the late 1830s. The town's population grew dramatically between 1841 and 1851, increasing from 643 to 2,814 inhabitants. Although this particular terrace was not built by Dunbar McMaster and Company, it nevertheless developed as part of the town's expansion driven by the success of the linen industry. The houses were inhabited over the years by mill workers and their families.

The original terrace comprised eight houses built between 1864 and 1868, with construction progressing from north to south. The earliest houses date from circa 1865 and the final houses were added by 1868. The terrace first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901-2. Originally, most houses were valued at £4 10 shillings, with the exception of a dwelling over a gateway, which being smaller was valued at £2 5 shillings. Two houses were completed by 1866 and initially housed tenants Moses Reid and Abraham Gray. Subsequent occupants included John Martin (1867), Sarah Vance and Joseph Wilson (1878), John Conway (1882), Joseph Powell and Richard Burns (1893), and by the 1901 census, Jane Powell and Richard Brown. Many residents worked in various capacities within the mill as drawers, spreaders, flax dressers, spinners, yarn bleachers and tow sorters. Later tenants included Joseph Boyce, Henry Adamson, Thomas Smyth, Andrew Holland, Eliza Jane McKeown (a linen thread spooler) and Samuel Hardy.

As a modern reconstruction built circa 1980, the current structure is of no historic architectural interest.