5 Main Street, Hillsborough, County Down, BT26 6AE

5 Main Street, Hillsborough is an end-of-terrace, two-storey over basement house with an attic storey, built in red brick around 1820, with an integrated carriage arch. It is irregular on plan and faces east, terminating a terrace of varied houses that lines the west side of Main Street. The house has been restored over the last twenty years: a 20th-century shopfront has been removed and the original 19th-century front elevation reinstated. Some original internal features survive. The building has notable historical connections with its neighbour, No. 7 Main Street, as both houses operated together as a Police Barracks during the 19th century. Well proportioned and detailed, it forms a significant landmark at the lower end of a prominent historic terrace in Hillsborough.

EXTERIOR

The roof is finished in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, and the redbrick chimneystack has been rebuilt and fitted with terracotta pots. Cast-iron guttering on iron brackets runs along a stepped redbrick eaves course, and there is a cast-iron downpipe. The main walling is redbrick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing; the side and rear elevations are rendered.

Window openings are square-headed with smooth rendered surrounds, brick jack arches, painted masonry sills, and timber sash windows retaining cylinder and horticultural glass.

The front east elevation is two windows wide. The south bay contains an integrated three-centred carriage arch, and there is a railed basement area. At ground floor level, a window and door opening beneath a voussoired brick flat arch survive from an earlier commercial shopfront. The main door opening is round-headed with a deep moulded architrave surround, impost mouldings, and contains a four-panelled timber door with brass furniture and a webbed timber fanlight with original glazing. The door opens onto a paved platform that bridges the basement area and is enclosed by original cast-iron railings set into a low sandstone plinth wall. The carriage arch retains its original vertically-sheeted double-leaf doors and has cement and stone paving. The south side elevation is abutted by the adjoining No. 7 Main Street.

The rear west elevation is three windows wide, with the carriage arch opening sloping down to basement level. The walling here is painted render. A double-height, round-headed stairhall window opening retains its original multi-pane timber glazing. All windows are 6/6 timber sash except the basement window, which is 8/8. At basement level there is a segmental-headed door opening with a deep moulded surround containing a glazed panelled timber door with replacement console brackets, a lintel cornice, and an original spoked fanlight. The north gable is a plain painted rendered wall fronting onto the public paved area in front of the park.

SETTING

The house terminates the north end of a terrace of varying house types along the west side of Main Street. To the rear, the house opens onto a paved terrace overlooking an extensively landscaped rear plot enclosed by a tall rubblestone wall along the north boundary. A small, narrow modern single-storey lean-to extension with a natural slate roof is attached to the rear west elevation and runs along the original north boundary wall.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

No. 5 Main Street first appears on the 1833 Ordnance Survey map for Hillsborough, depicted as a square building at the bottom of Main Street. The Ordnance Survey and Townland Valuation maps of the 1830s show it as a terraced house situated between No. 7 Main Street and Hillsborough's Old Brewery, which was demolished in 1873. A large oblong outbuilding was visible to the rear of the house on these early maps, but by the time of the second Ordnance Survey in 1858 it had been taken down. The Townland Valuation records the house as valued at £10, occupied by a Mr William Gibson. Griffith's Valuation of 1861 records that the house formed part of the Hillsborough Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks, and it is likely that it served as a residence for serving officers — William Gibson being noted as Head Constable of the village at that time. The Barracks occupied both Nos. 5 and 7 Main Street, which were let by a Mr Hercules Bradshaw, a magistrate at Hillsborough who also owned a distillery and large house in Culcavy and held a number of properties in the town. In 1861 No. 5 was jointly valued with the Barracks at £35, with an annual rent of £40 paid to Bradshaw. The valuer recorded it as a first-class B building measuring nine by nine yards, two storeys high, with a coach arch, lane, and basement level. In 1863, following the death of Hercules Bradshaw, a Ms Mary Anne Moorhead came into ownership of No. 5. The building continued in use as part of the Barracks until 1st January 1877, when it was converted back to a dwelling and valued at £9 5s. The first occupant after this conversion, a Mr Hugh Davis, took up residence in 1878 and remained until 1885, when a Mr James Toland came into possession. That same year the Marquis of Downshire purchased the house from Mary Anne Moorhead and was recorded as landlord until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930. The house stood vacant between 1887 and 1892 before being occupied by a Mr James Crawford. Census records confirm that police constables continued to live here between 1901 and 1911. The 1901 census records Crawford (aged 69) as a retired Royal Irish Constabulary officer living at No. 5 with his wife Margaret (aged 74), and describes the house as a second-class dwelling with seven or eight inhabited rooms. Crawford remained until 1910, when Archibald Wilson (aged 40), another police constable, moved in with his family. Wilson resided there until 1913, after which the occupant is recorded as a Mrs Elizabeth Walker, probably the wife or widow of Sergeant Walker who worked in the Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks in 1910. The final recorded resident was a Mr James Howard, who lived at No. 5 from 1918 until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930.

It has been suggested that the house was almost certainly built at the same time as the Barracks, but that both were probably constructed on the foundations of earlier 17th-century buildings, as the building material changes from brick to stone beneath the level of the railings, indicating that the street level in this area was raised substantially at some stage. Field research suggests the building was constructed sometime between 1820 and 1839 and was originally the residence of the Brewery Manager. In 1980 the owners of No. 5 claimed that the fanlight at the rear entrance had been salvaged from Cherryvale House on the Ravenhill Road in Belfast when it was demolished. In 1976 the architectural historian C.E.B. Brett described the house as "lower two-storey brick, similar wide windows but in simple architraves with brick coach arch." The former barracks was listed in 1976 and renovated in 1980. At some point in the mid-20th century a shopfront was added; it has since been removed and the original façade style restored. Since listing, the house has been repeatedly repaired and restored, with work carried out in 1985, 1995, and most recently in 2008 when the windows were renovated.