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

2 Victoria Crescent, Lisburn

Built around 1880, this is a symmetrical bow-fronted mid-terrace house of three bays and two storeys with attic, constructed in polychromatic brick. The house forms part of a distinctive crescent of nineteen similar dwellings originally built for workers at the nearby linen mills at Hilden. The terrace is laid out along Millbrook Road as it curves onto Wesley Street, converging at an unusual acute angle. This particular house is wedge-shaped on plan, facing northwest.

The external fabric is largely intact. The roof is pitched and curved natural slate with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles, supported by two original polychromatic brick chimneysstacks and two gabled redbrick dormers. The walls are laid in English garden wall bond using redbrick with yellowbrick courses and a brick plinth course. The front elevation is five windows wide and bow-fronted. Window openings are segmental-headed with yellowbrick surrounds, black brick keystones, and painted sandstone sills; the original windows have been replaced with uPVC. The central door surround projects forward with an arched yellowbrick design featuring a painted black brick keystone, impost mouldings, stop-chamfered pilasters, and brick plinth blocks. The door itself is a replacement timber panelled type with fanlight above. To either side of the door are three-sided canted bays built in yellow brick with angled brick cornice and roof hidden behind brick parapet. Yellow brick angled eaves courses and frieze run below plastic rainwater goods. The left side elevation is abutted by the adjoining house at No.4, while the right side is abutted by No.1. The rear elevation is concave curved with uPVC windows and a small rear yard.

The original staircase survives internally, retaining much of the late Victorian character despite the loss of original windows. The house was designated first class due to its size and construction materials, comprising nine rooms.

Historical Context

The terrace first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of around 1900 and dates from approximately 1880, showing stylistic echoes of the neighbouring Methodist Church which opened in 1876. This part of Lisburn was developed towards the end of the nineteenth century, comprising largely low-cost housing for workers in nearby linen mills including Barbour's thread mill, Richardson's beetling mill, and the Island flax spinning mill. The Lisburn Standard of 1898 advertised the area as "one of the best letting districts in the town, convenient to Messrs Barbour's Mills and other large public works". The present terrace was of superior quality compared to other housing in the area and was apparently built by Barbour's as accommodation for single workers, though census returns from the early twentieth century show that the majority of residents were actually families.

At the 1901 census, the house was occupied by Sarah Dickson, a thirty-year-old widow running it as a boarding house, with her ten-year-old son and five boarders in residence—two young women working as a milliner and dressmaker respectively, and three young men employed as drapers' assistants and a mill clerk. By 1911 the house had passed to William Dickson and his wife Mary; William was Head of Department at a linen thread manufacturer, most likely Barbour's. They had two young children living with them.

Setting and Group Value

The house has group value with the other eighteen houses forming the distinctive terrace, and with the Methodist Church and Manse to the north. It is one of three curved houses connecting the southwest part of the terrace on Millbrook Road to the north part on Wesley Street. The terrace is set on the east side of Queens Road at a lower level than the road itself.