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

Number 17 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 the town centre.

The house is square on plan beneath a pitched natural slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles. The rendered chimney stack carries clay pots. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods serve the front elevation, with uPVC rainwater goods to the rear. External walls are finished in painted ruled-and-lined render. All windows are replacement uPVC units set above projecting masonry sills.

The principal elevation faces east: at first-floor level there is a single window to the centre; at ground-floor level a modern uPVC door sits to the right and a window to the left. The south elevation abuts the adjoining property, as does the north elevation. To the rear, the west elevation has a single first-floor window at centre, while the ground floor is screened by a red-brick wall with a timber-sheeted door to the right, enclosing the rear yard. Vehicular access is available to the rear, and the site is bounded towards the mill by mature trees. The house forms part of a terrace of twenty-five dwellings on Ann Street, excluding the gate lodge at number 1.

The house was originally one of a back-to-back terrace built by the proprietors of the adjacent linen thread spinning mill. The mill was founded in 1839 under the name Dunbar and Thompson — later trading as Dunbar McMaster and Co. Ltd — and was a hugely successful enterprise largely responsible for the growth and prosperity of Gilford throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Hugh Dunbar, descended from a linen manufacturing family whose grandfather had leased property at Huntley from the Whytes of Loughbrickland, was compelled by competitive pressure from the new wet-spinning process to establish his own spinning mill in 1834. He chose Gilford for the venture and entered 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 before the mill opened. The mill 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. By 1870 the mill employed over 2,000 workers and had built 200 houses between 1836 and 1862. All company-owned houses were inspected monthly, and annually lime-washed, painted and repaired at the firm's expense. The mill also provided a medical attendant and a school as part of a broader structure of social welfare support for its workforce.

The terrace appears to be among the earliest housing built by the company. It was originally constructed as two rows of back-to-back houses: numbers 9 to 26 fronted onto High Street, and to the rear of these, sharing their back wall, was a second row called Bann Street, which opened towards the linen mill. Both rows are shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, captioned "High Street" and "Bann St[reet]", and are listed in Griffith's Valuation of 1863 as the property of Dunbar McMaster and Co. The High Street houses were all valued at £2 10s and measured fifteen feet long by twelve feet wide, being two storeys in height. They were noted as "deteriorated by age and not in good repair", suggesting 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 dimensions.

The back-to-back houses 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." The houses were often occupied by single people and couples without children, though it was not uncommon for a family of four or more to occupy one of these two-room dwellings. Valuation records and census returns show considerable mobility within the terrace, with many tenants recorded at two or more different addresses over the years.

The first tenants recorded at what is now number 17 were James Dyers on the High Street side and Elizabeth Martin in the house fronting onto Bann Street. Subsequent tenants included George Fowler (1887), Elizabeth Morrow (1902), Joseph Ritchie (1902), Sarah Parker (1903), Fannie Mercer (1904), Nicholas Mercer (1905), and David Gibson (1907). The 1901 census records Elizabeth Morrow, born in England and an unmarried spinner at the thread factory, living on the High Street side, while Sarah Parker and her three children — aged between 13 and 23, all of whom worked at the mill — lived to the rear in Bann Street. By the 1911 census, Elizabeth Morrow was still the occupier of the front house, though absent at the time of enumeration; to the rear lived Wilson Benson, a store keeper at the mill, and his aunt, who worked there as a preparer. In 1916 the rear Bann Street house was incorporated into the front dwelling, and the property was revalued at £4 10s with a weekly rent of 3s 3d. Later occupants included Frank Roberts (date unknown) and Hugh Ferguson (1922). The majority of the back-to-back houses were amalgamated in this way in 1915–16, though six of them remained separate until the 1930s.

In 1879, following the imposition of a very high import tax 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 resulting emigration had a significant effect on Gilford's population, which halved between 1871 and 1881; many of the original occupants of this terrace are likely to have been part of that movement. The company nonetheless continued to thrive in Gilford and held 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 mill 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. Although it is of local interest due to its association with Gilford Mill and as an example of mill workers' housing, it is not among the best surviving examples of its type. Extensive alterations over the years have left little historic fabric remaining and have reduced its architectural and historic significance. It was removed from the statutory list on 1 November 2013.