Hill House, 35 Main Street, Hillsborough, County Down, BT26 6AE

Hill House is an end-of-terrace, three-storey-with-attic redbrick townhouse built around 1780, occupying a prominent corner position where Main Street meets the north side of The Square in Hillsborough. It forms the eastern termination of a terrace of similar Georgian houses lining the north side of The Square (the three adjoining properties), though it stands a storey lower than its neighbours and handles the corner in an unusual way, presenting a tall gabled elevation to Main Street rather than a conventional return. Despite this difference in height, the house retains most of its original fabric and plays a crucial role in stitching together the architectural character of both The Square and Main Street.

The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. A large rendered chimneystack with octagonal clay pots rises from the east gable. Cast-iron guttering, carried on shaped iron brackets, runs below an ogee-moulded sandstone eaves cornice, with cast-iron downpipes completing the rainwater goods. The main walling is redbrick laid in Flemish bond, with the lower floor finished in painted ruled-and-lined render.

The east-facing gabled front elevation onto Main Street is two windows wide and fenestrated up to attic level. Window openings are camber-headed redbrick with original six-over-six timber sash windows glazed in cylinder glass and set on painted stone sills; the attic has three-over-three sashes and the lower floor has six-over-three sashes. The rendered lower floor extends northward as a screen wall that incorporates the principal entrance doorcase: a segmental-headed opening with a moulded surround, keystone, and impost blocks, containing a flat-panelled timber door flanked by sidelights beneath a lintel cornice and a spoked timber fanlight. The door opens onto a paved platform approached by five granite steps, enclosed on both sides by spear-headed wrought-iron railings set on a rendered wall.

The south elevation faces onto The Square, is three windows wide with six-over-six sash windows, and is enclosed by wrought-iron railings on a low rendered wall. At the corner of this railing stands a decorative wrought-iron lamp standard. The west side elevation abuts the adjoining house at No. 13 (a neighbouring listed building). The north rear elevation has an irregular arrangement of window openings and is abutted by a lean-to entrance bay and rear projection; most windows here are six-over-six timber sashes, with one round-headed opening above the lean-to containing timber Y-tracery. Adjoining the north rear elevation is a two-storey rendered former outhouse, the upper level of which houses the kitchen.

To the rear, the garden is screened from Main Street by a tall rubblestone wall pierced by a pair of stone piers supporting sheeted timber gates. The listing covers not only the house itself but also this walling, the piers, gates, railings, lamp standard, and entrance steps.

Hill House first appears on a plan of Hillsborough dating to around 1800, shown as a square building with a rear return and a yard stretching down Main Street, with a large outbuilding at the yard's end facing onto Main Street. The property was then occupied by a Mr Robinson. A map of around 1803 shows little change. The first Ordnance Survey map of 1833 depicts the house and its outbuildings connected together. The historical record of occupants runs as follows: a Mr Henry Murray is recorded in the Townland Valuation of the 1830s, when the property was valued at £16; by 1861 Griffith's Valuation records the house as unoccupied and its value slightly reduced to £15; in 1868 a Mr Robert Wallace occupied it, vacating in 1870; from 1874 a Mr William James Beckwick lived there until his death in 1878; he was replaced in 1881 by Robert McGorney. A valuation book for the intervening period is missing, but by 1909 the value had risen to £20, before being reduced again when a Mr Richard Crawley, a local painter and carpenter, took occupation that year, remaining until Annual Revisions for the area ended in 1930. The 1911 census records Richard Crawley, a 59-year-old joiner, living at Hill House with his wife Elizabeth, married for 35 years, and four of their children. The house was recorded as a first-class dwelling of 11 inhabited rooms, with outbuildings in the rear yard including a coach house, a fowl house, a workshop, and a wash house. By 1914 the outbuilding at the end of the yard — probably formerly a coach house, its coach arch having been filled in — had been converted into a separate dwelling, now No. 33 Main Street.

The documentary basis for the construction date is well established. A letter from Lord Downshire's agent, John Gardner, dated February 1779, held in the Archaeological Survey of County Down, states "we are now clearing the ground for the four houses to be built in the square," confirming that Hill House and its three neighbours were built together in the late 18th century. The architectural historian C. E. B. Brett described No. 35 as "only two floors high over a semi-basement... brick built with moulded stone eaves-cornice and the roof is slated," and noted that the row as a whole was built at the same period. Brett also records that Hill House had been the residence of a number of distinguished figures, the most recent of whom was the late Sir Ivan Ewart, a local linen industrialist who served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He lost an eye during his service and was held as a prisoner of war at Colditz Castle, where he took part in an unsuccessful escape attempt. After the war he devoted himself to charitable work supporting the blind and partially sighted, and died in 1995. Brett noted in 1974 that Hill House and its neighbours in The Square appeared rather neglected; following listing in 1976, restoration work was carried out, with repainting and repairs in 1981 and further repairs in 1994.