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

12 Victoria Crescent, Lisburn

A mid-terrace two-storey house with attic, built around 1880 as part of a distinctive crescent of nineteen similar dwellings laid out across Wesley Street and Millbrook Road in Lisburn. The house was constructed to provide accommodation for workers at the nearby linen mills, particularly Barbour's Thread Mill, Richardson's beetling mill, and the Island flax spinning mill. Despite losing its original windows, it retains much of its late Victorian character.

The house is rectangular on plan facing north, built in red and yellow brick laid in English garden wall bond with a brick plinth course. It has a two-bay frontage with segmental-headed window openings featuring yellow brick surrounds and black brick keystones. The front door has a projecting arched yellow brick surround with a painted black brick keystone, impost mouldings, stop-chamfered pilasters, and brick plinth blocks. The original windows have been replaced with uPVC; the door is also modern uPVC with a fanlight above.

The roof is pitched natural slate with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles. A pair of shared original polychromatic brick chimneystacks rise from the ridge, accompanied by a gabled red brick dormer. Yellow brick angled eaves course and frieze sit below plastic rainwater goods. The left side elevation is abutted by the adjoining house No. 14, while the right side is abutted by No. 10. The rear elevation has been extended with a modern two-storey rendered flat-roofed extension, with a small enclosed rear yard beyond.

The terrace first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of around 1900, showing some stylistic echoes of the neighbouring Methodist Church, which opened in 1876. Contemporary records from 1898 describe the area as one of the best letting districts in Lisburn, convenient to the major mills. Census records from 1901 and 1911 show the house was home to families whose members worked predominantly in the linen industry, classified as second class according to its age and construction, comprising six rooms. The building has group value with the other eighteen houses in the distinctive crescent, and with the neighbouring Methodist Church and Manse to the north.