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

6 Victoria Crescent, Lisburn

A mid-terrace two-storey house with attic, built around 1880 as part of a distinctive nineteen-house terrace laid out in a crescent plan across Wesley Street and Millbrook Road. Originally constructed to house workers at the nearby Hilden linen mills, the terrace represents an important phase of Lisburn's industrial-era development in the late nineteenth century.

The house is rectangular on plan, facing north, and constructed in polychromatic brick with red and yellow brick walling laid in English garden wall bond and a brick plinth course. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles. Two original shared polychromatic brick chimneystacks and a gabled redbrick dormer are prominent features. The yellowbrick angled eaves course and frieze below are fitted with plastic rainwater goods.

The front elevation is two windows wide, with segmental-headed window openings displaying yellowbrick surrounds, black brick keystones and painted sandstone sills. The windows themselves are modern uPVC replacements. A projecting arched yellowbrick door surround forms the main entrance, featuring a painted black brick keystone, impost mouldings, stop-chamfered pilasters and brick plinth blocks, with a replacement timber panelled door and fanlight above. Despite the loss of original windows, the house retains considerable late Victorian character externally.

The left side elevation is abutted by the adjoining house No. 8, while the right side is abutted by No. 4. A two-storey modern redbrick extension has been added to the rear, adjoining a small enclosed rear yard.

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. Barbour's thread mill, Richardson's beetling mill and the Island flax spinning mill were all located nearby. The Lisburn Standard of 1898 promoted the area as "one of the best letting districts in the town, convenient to Messrs Barbour's Mills and other large public works". Census records from the early twentieth century show that approximately half the terrace's inhabitants worked in the linen industry, predominantly for Barbour's Thread Mill, whilst others were employed in various trades. Current residents state the terrace was built by Barbour's as accommodation for bachelors and spinsters, though 1901 and 1911 census returns suggest the majority of residents were actually families. The 1901 occupier was George Alfred Palmer, a breadserver (bakery delivery man) from England, living with his wife and five children. By 1911 the house was occupied by John Harper, a watchmaker from Londonderry, his wife and two young children.

The house has group value with the other eighteen houses in the distinctive terrace, as well as with the Methodist Church and Manse to the north.