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

20 Victoria Crescent is a mid-terrace, three-bay, two-storey house built around 1880 in polychromatic brick with an integrated carriage arch. It forms part of a distinctive crescent of nineteen similar houses laid out across Wesley Street and Millbrook Road in Lisburn, built originally to house workers employed in the nearby linen mills at Hilden.

The house is constructed of redbrick walling laid in English garden wall bond with yellowbrick courses and a brick plinth course. It has a pitched natural slate roof with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles and two original redbrick chimneystacks. Plastic rainwater goods are fitted to a yellowbrick angled eaves course. The front elevation faces north and is three windows wide. Segmental-headed window openings have yellowbrick surrounds, black brick keystones, and painted red sandstone sills, though the original windows have been replaced with uPVC. The front door is set within a projecting arched yellowbrick surround featuring a painted black brick keystone, impost mouldings, stop-chamfered pilasters, and brick plinth blocks, with a uPVC door and fanlight. A segmental-headed carriage arch opening occupies the left bay, with a yellowbrick arch and black brick keystone. The front elevation sits at a lower level than the neighbouring house to the south.

The left and right side elevations are abutted by adjoining houses. A two-storey modern redbrick flat-roofed extension has been added to the rear, adjoining a small enclosed yard.

Despite the loss of its original windows, the house retains much of its late Victorian character externally. It has significant group value with the other eighteen houses in this distinctive crescent and with the neighbouring Methodist Church and Manse to the north.

The terrace first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of around 1900 and dates from approximately 1880, showing stylistic echoes of the Methodist church opened in 1876. This part of Lisburn was developed towards the end of the nineteenth century as low-cost housing for workers in nearby linen mills, including Barbour's thread mill, Richardson's beetling mill, and the Island flax spinning mill. The Lisburn Standard of 1898 advertised dwellings in the area as being in "one of the best letting districts in the town, convenient to Messrs Barbour's Mills and other large public works". Current occupants state the terrace was built by Barbour's as accommodation for bachelors and spinsters, though census returns from the early twentieth century indicate that the majority of residents were actually families. At the 1901 census, the house was occupied by Annie Hillock, a 69-year-old widow, and her daughter Mary, a dressmaker. By 1911, Mary Hillock occupied the house alone, still employed as a dressmaker. The house was designated second class according to its size and construction and comprised six rooms.