16 Victoria Crescent, Lisburn, County Antrim, BT27 4TG

16 Victoria Crescent is a mid-terrace two-bay two-storey house with attic, built around 1880 in polychromatic brick. It retains much of its late Victorian character externally and preserves its original stair internally, despite the loss of its original windows. A single-storey modern redbrick extension has been added to the rear.

The house is rectangular on plan, facing north, and was built as part of a distinctive terrace of nineteen similar houses laid out in a crescent formation running from Millbrook Road to Westley Street, converging at an unusual acute angle. The pitched natural slate roof is finished with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles. There is an original redbrick chimneystack to the east, a replacement brick chimneystack to the west, and a gabled redbrick dormer. Plastic rainwater goods are fitted to the yellowbrick angled eaves course and frieze below.

The walling is redbrick laid in English garden wall bond with yellowbrick courses and a brick plinth course. Segmental-headed window openings have yellowbrick surrounds, black brick keystones, and painted red sandstone sills, now fitted with uPVC windows. The front elevation is two windows wide. The projecting arched yellowbrick door surround features a painted black brick keystone, impost mouldings, stop-chamfered pilasters, and brick plinth blocks, with a replacement hardwood door and fanlight over. The left side elevation is abutted by the adjoining house No. 18, and the right side elevation by the adjoining building No. 14. The rear elevation is abutted by a flat-roofed two-storey modern rendered extension with a small enclosed rear yard.

The terrace was built as part of the development of this part of Lisburn towards the end of the nineteenth century, comprising low-cost housing for workers in the nearby linen mills. Barbour's thread mill, Richardson's beetling mill, and the Island flax spinning mill were all within a short distance. The present terrace was of better quality than other housing in the area and is understood to have been built by Barbour's as accommodation for single workers. The terrace first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of around 1900 and shows stylistic echoes of the neighbouring Methodist Church, which opened in 1876.

Census records from the early twentieth century show that approximately half the inhabitants of the terrace were employed in the linen industry, largely in linen thread production and therefore likely employees of Barbour's Thread Mill. Many other occupations are also represented within the terrace. Despite the tradition that this was accommodation for single people, the majority of residents in the first decade of the twentieth century appear to have been families. At the 1901 census the house was occupied by Margaret Kearney, who kept house for her two sisters both working as seamstresses and two boarders, one a railway clerk from Fermanagh and the other an Englishman working on the ordnance survey. By 1911 the house was occupied by Isabella Younger, a widow of 36, who lived with her twelve-year-old son. The house was designated second class according to its size and construction and comprised six rooms.

The building has group value with the other eighteen houses in this distinctive terrace and with the neighbouring Methodist Church and Manse to the north.