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

33 Main Street, Hillsborough

This is a Grade B2 listed building—an end-of-terrace, two-storey house with attic, built around 1800 in stone and redbrick. It forms part of a terrace of four similarly scaled houses lining the east side of Main Street at its elevated end where it meets The Square.

The house is square on plan, facing east. Its most distinctive feature is the hipped natural slate roof with rolled lead ridges. A single redbrick chimneystack rises through the roof, and cast-iron guttering on iron brackets runs along the brick eaves course. The external walls are snecked coursed basalt with squared red sandstone quoins and redbrick surrounds to all openings. All window and door openings are square-headed, formed in redbrick with sandstone sills. The front elevation is two windows wide, with replacement timber sash windows and a square-headed door opening with a replacement timber panelled door. The door opens onto a raised concrete platform with three concrete steps and iron railing. The ground floor window is set within a former elliptical-headed redbrick arch. The south side elevation has a single 2/2 timber sash window to the first floor. The rear elevation is cement rendered with no openings. The north side elevation is abutted by the adjoining house No. 31. The house has no rear garden; a tall rubblestone screen wall with sandstone coping and a sheeted door separates it from the garden of No. 35 Main Street.

Originally built as the coach house for Hill House (at the corner of Main Street and The Square), this building first appears on an illustrated map of Hillsborough dated 1803, depicted as a large square outbuilding belonging to Hill House, which was then owned by Mr Robinson. A blocked-up coach-arch remains visible on the exterior. In the Townland Valuation of the 1830s, the occupant was recorded as Henry Murray, with Hill House and its offices valued at £16. By 1861, Griffith's Valuation noted the house and its offices as unoccupied, valued at £15. The property subsequently passed through several occupants: Robert Wallace (1868–1870), William James Beckwick (1874–1878), Robert McGorney (from 1881), and Richard Crawley (from 1909 until the Annual Revisions ended in 1930). By 1914, the out office at the end of the yard had been converted into a dwelling and was valued separately from Hill House, though the 1911 Census still recorded a coach house amongst Hill House's out offices. Samuel Patterson purchased the converted coach house from Richard Crawley in 1914 for £310. Patterson let the house to Arthur March in 1914, who remained for several years. John Dunlop, a former blacksmith, was the last resident recorded in the Annual Revisions, appearing in the Ulster Towns Directory of 1910.

According to architectural historian C. E. B. Brett, the row of four houses at the north side of The Square in Hillsborough were built in the late 18th century. A letter dated February 1779 from Lord Downshire's agent, John Gardner, 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." It is uncertain whether the coach house was built at the same time as Hill House and the other buildings around The Square, but its appearance on the 1803 map confirms it was the earliest building constructed along this terrace of Nos. 27–33 Main Street.

The house was listed in 1976. Repairs were carried out in 1978 and again in 1983. It retains its original Georgian proportions, and although its external features are replacement, they remain intact. The building is situated within a conservation area and holds group value as part of a significant terrace.