Site of former no. 29 Bowling Green, Strabane, Tyrone

This is the site on the northeastern side of the Bowling Green in Strabane, County Tyrone, formerly occupied by a three-storey end-of-terrace house. The building was demolished around 1988 to make way for the present police station complex.

The house formed part of a short terrace of four similar three-storey dwellings, described in a survey carried out on 10 February 1970. According to that survey, the terrace — probably built before 1833 — had rendered walls and slated roofs set behind parapets with moulded cornices, with half the terrace roof hipped. The windows were drop-hung sashes: those on the first floor retained full glazing bars, all but one on the ground floor did likewise, while on the second floor only one window retained full glazing bars, the others being plain with single vertical glazing bars. The windows of two of the houses were framed within eared architraves. Three entrances were flanked by plain wooden pilasters, with an entablature over one of them. The fourth doorway was recessed within a square-headed opening and surmounted by a rectangular fanlight with semicircular glazing bars and radials. The terrace as a whole was nine windows wide.

The site is shown as developed on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34, with a building footprint closely matching what stood there until demolition. The town plan drawn up to accompany the valuation of 1832–34 has unfortunately been lost, making it difficult to establish details of the buildings in Strabane at that date with any certainty. The second valuation of 1857 records that this house was at that time part of a larger dwelling which also took in the former number 27 to the northwest. This raises the possibility that it may have been the large property recorded in the 1832 valuation as measuring 49 feet by 52 feet by 32 feet, occupied by a William Orr and rated at £38 11s 11d. An annotation of 1896 in a later valuation book states that the house was "50 years old" at that date, implying it was built around 1846 rather than before 1833. However, such estimates by valuers are not always reliable, and the building's plain, parapeted late Georgian façade — as visible in the 1970 survey photographs — suggests it was probably constructed considerably earlier than 1846.

Whatever its precise date of construction, by 1857 the larger property of which this house formed part was operating as a branch of the Provincial Bank, managed by a James Crosbie, with the representatives of General Henry Barnard as immediate lessor. According to Michael Harron's research into economic developments in Strabane, the Provincial Bank had established a branch on the Bowling Green by 1839, and it was certainly in operation by 1846 when it appears in Slater's Directory of that year. It cannot be confirmed with certainty, however, that the branch operated from this specific building before 1857; other Strabane banks are known to have changed premises within the Bowling Green during the 19th century. The property appears to have continued as a branch of the Provincial Bank until sometime in the 1880s, with John C. Urquhart and John G. Elliott serving as managers following James Crosbie. By 1896 the building was reported vacant and "out of repair." The following year a James White took over the tenancy, and by 1899 he was subletting the ground floor as offices to a solicitor named Robert Burke. In 1910 White — noted in the 1905 Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory as a hardware merchant with premises in Main Street — acquired the freehold and is listed as sole occupier. The 1905 Ordnance Survey town plan marks the building as "Bank House." White appears to have died in the early 1930s, after which the building was divided into two separate properties. One member of the White family remained in the newly formed number 29 until 1954, when the house was purchased by an Agnes V. Wagentreiber, who was still in residence in 1972. The property, together with the former number 27, was demolished around 1988 to make way for the present police station.