3 Mourne View Terrace, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 3HJ

A two-storey-with-attic Victorian mid-terrace house built around 1890, located on an elevated site to the west side of Newry Road, south of Banbridge town centre. It forms one of a terrace of five similar dwellings, all well-preserved with much original architectural detailing intact. Although the terrace itself dates from the late 1870s and early 1890s, it represents a relatively late example of the Victorian terrace type and is not among the best examples, though it displays proportions and detailing typical of the style and is associated with the mid-nineteenth-century development of the town centre.

The house has a rectangular plan with a two-storey canted bay rising to a canted dormer and a two-storey return to the rear. The pitched roof is laid with natural slate and finished with blue and black angled ridge tiles. The attic dormer has a hipped roof with leaded ridges and hips. A rendered chimneystack with moulded caps and clay pots sits atop. The eaves feature cast-iron ogee rainwater goods on a dentilled cornice.

The walling is painted smooth render with a dentilled moulded string course above the second-floor windows and first-floor canted bay window. Windows are primarily 1/1 timber sliding sash, with round-arched examples to the dormer and camber-arched windows to the first floor with continuous sills to the canted bay.

The principal elevation faces east. The two-storey canted bay window stands to the left with a dormer above, each face having a window on both floors—square-headed on the ground floor and camber-arched on the first floor, with round-arched windows to the dormer. To the right at first-floor level is a 2/2 camber-arched window. The ground floor features a replacement panelled-and-glazed timber door with an elliptical overlight surmounted by a hood mould with carved foliate stops. The south elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The north elevation is likewise abutted by its neighbour. The west (rear) elevation was not viewed.

The house stands set back from the street on its elevated site with a small front garden planted with shrubs and enclosed by a smooth rendered wall. The front path is laid with original terracotta and black square tiles.

The terrace was completed in 1890 by local developer John Gordon and let to members of Banbridge's aspiring middle classes. According to current residents, Gordon had been involved in the Armagh rail disaster of 12 June 1889, in which 80 people were killed and 260 injured, and received substantial compensation. This windfall enabled him to complete the terrace, construction of which had begun in the late 1870s. Two houses were completed and inhabited by 1879, with a further three added in 1890. The terrace was originally named 'Mourne Terrace' and has been known as 'Mourne View' from the 1920s onwards.

Number three first appears in valuation records as a newly-built vacant dwelling in 1890. Its occupants have included Margaret Greene (1893), Elbary Allen (1904), and George J Doyle (1907). At the 1901 census, the occupier was James Kennedy, a linen manufacturer, who lived with his three adult children; his elder daughter kept house while his son worked as a clerk. Kennedy had previously lived at number one. By 1911, the occupier was George Joseph Doyle, a customs and excise officer, who lived with his Dublin-born wife, four young children, and his sister; two of his older children had been born in England. Subsequent occupiers included R G Murray (1913), Sarah Anne Craig (1916, died 1922), and James Gordon (1923), a descendant of the original developer. Later residents were F R D Humphreys (1929), Sydney G Black (1938), and Annie D Patterson (1954). At the time of the First General Revaluation in 1933 to 1934, the accommodation comprised four bedrooms, two reception rooms, a bathroom, kitchen, pantry, and scullery, with rent set at £40 or more. The house was one of only two in the row to have a garage and was revalued at £25. The property continues in use as a dwelling.