2 Ann Street, Gilford, Craigavon, Co Down, BT63 6HX

2 Ann Street is a two-bay, two-storey end-of-terrace house built around 1840, situated at the east entrance to Gilford Mill, north-west of Gilford town centre in County Down. It forms part of a terrace of 25 dwellings on Ann Street (excluding the gatehouse at No. 1) and is of particular interest for its close historical and physical relationship with the adjacent linen thread spinning mill and as a surviving example of mill workers' housing in the town. Although all the houses in the terrace have been altered over the years — which has reduced the integrity of the group as a whole — their location and relationship to the mill and its setting remain significant, and this section of the terrace is nonetheless a good representative example of its type.

The building is rectangular in plan. The roof is half-hipped, covered in natural slate with a leaded hip and terracotta ridge. There is a rendered chimney stack. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods are fitted throughout. The external walls are finished in painted ruled-and-lined render. Windows are replacement uPVC units set within projecting masonry sills. The principal elevation faces east and is two openings wide, with a modern uPVC entrance door to the left at ground floor level. The west elevation abuts the adjoining building. The north (rear) elevation has a single centrally positioned window at first floor level, with the ground floor concealed. The east elevation abuts the other adjoining building. A photograph from 1900 records the original fenestration, which comprised 3/6 sliding sash windows at first floor and 6/6 sliding sash windows at ground floor, with a solid timber entrance door surmounted by a transom window.

The house was built by the proprietors of the adjacent linen thread spinning mill, originally known as Dunbar and Thompson and later trading as Dunbar McMaster & Co Ltd. The mill was a hugely successful enterprise that was largely responsible for the growth and prosperity of Gilford throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The founding figure, Hugh Dunbar, was descended from a linen family — his grandfather had leased a property at Huntley from the Whytes of Loughbrickland, where Hugh had been manufacturing thread while his hand-loom weavers produced linen cloth. By 1834, competition from mill-spun yarns produced by the new wet-spinning process compelled Dunbar to establish his own spinning mill or face ruin. He chose Gilford as the site, entering into partnership with William Agnew Stewart and Robert Thompson to raise the necessary capital. Land was obtained from Hugh Law of Woodbank, and the tail race ran through land belonging to James Uprichard of Bannvale. Stewart died in 1837, and the mill opened in 1839 under the name Dunbar and Thompson. It was an immediate success, drawing large numbers of workers to the town: between 1841 and 1851 the population more than quadrupled, from 643 to 2,814.

Dunbar took his duties as an employer seriously, providing a structure of social welfare support that included a medical attendant and a school. He began building houses for his workforce almost immediately after the mill opened, and by 1870 the mill was employing over 2,000 workers, having constructed 200 houses between 1836 and 1862. All mill-owned houses were inspected monthly, and annually lime-washed, painted, and repaired at the firm's expense. A view of the mill said to date from around 1841, shortly after its completion, shows this terrace and the current building. The terrace first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, captioned "Ann Street".

The terrace is listed in Griffith's Valuation of 1863. The houses on Ann Street varied in valuation from £5 to £10 and were generally larger than other company-built housing, suggesting they may have been intended for mill supervisors. They were rated at the time as "slightly decayed but in repair." The first recorded resident of No. 2 was William Middleton, whose two-storey house measuring 5½ yards by 7¾ yards was leased from Dunbar McMaster & Co and valued at £5. Middleton paid a rent of two shillings and sixpence per week, a figure that can be set against the average workman's wage of 15 shillings per week in 1869 and an average weekly family wage of 36 shillings. Subsequent occupiers included Andrew McIlveen (1878), Edward Greer (1885), and Joseph Stevenson (1893), a blacksmith, who was living in the house at the time of the 1901 census with his wife and five children. The house was recorded as second class with four rooms; the eldest child, a 16-year-old girl, worked as a reefer in the mill. Stevenson was followed by Robert Darney (1910), and at the 1911 census the occupant was Hugh Ferguson, a young commercial clerk living with his new wife. Later residents included Wilson Benson (1916), James McKeown (1917), Margaret Cole (1919), and Ann Eliza Gracey (1921).

In 1879, following the imposition of very high import taxes on linen thread in the United States, Hugh Dunbar McMaster established a mill in Greenwich Village, New York, bringing over workers and machinery from Ireland and installing his brother John as manager. The emigration of workers from Gilford had a significant impact on the town's population, which halved between 1871 and 1881. The Gilford operation nevertheless continued to thrive and achieved 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, but 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.