86 Dromara Road, Hillsborough, County Down, BT26 6PE

86 Dromara Road is a semi-detached single-storey stone house with attic, dated 1841, located on the south side of Dromara Road in Hillsborough. It was built as a single dwelling with its neighbour No. 84 and possesses significant group value with that property.

The building is constructed in a loose Tudor idiom and is rectangular on plan, facing east. It features a pitched natural slate roof with black clay ridge tiles, a rebuilt redbrick chimneystack with terracotta pots, and cast-iron rainwater goods set to deep timber eaves. Decorative timber bargeboards ornament the north and south gables. The external walls are of snecked coursed rubblestone with cement pointing. Rusticated ashlar quoins and painted brick surrounds frame all openings.

Windows have camber-headed openings with painted masonry hood mouldings, painted masonry sills, and timber casement windows featuring some cylinder glass. The symmetrical front elevation presents a central square-headed door opening flanked by window openings, all with painted masonry hood mouldings. The door is a replacement timber panelled design opening onto a single concrete step. The gabled south elevation is abutted by a lean-to extension and outbuilding with a single square-headed window opening at attic level with painted rendered walling. The rear elevation is abutted by the neighbouring house. The gabled north elevation contains a single window opening to each floor, with a hood moulding to the ground floor only.

The setting comprises a concrete paved front area and a footpath through the front lawn, enclosed to the narrow avenue to the east by hedging and a decorative iron pedestrian gate.

The property appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1859, situated south of Large Park. A plaque bearing the Downshire arms above the door of No. 84 records both buildings' construction in 1841. Initially depicted as a single dwelling on the maps with a small outoffice to the rear, the house was let from the Marquis of Downshire. According to Griffith's Valuation of 1861, the occupant was Daniel Murray, who rented the one-and-a-half-storey house at £17 per annum; the property was recorded as a 1B class house with the site valued at £3 10 shillings. Daniel Murray occupied the house until 1874 when Patrick Murray took possession. John Patrick Hogg, a Roman Catholic farmer, occupied the house from 1900. The 1901 Census records Hogg at age 24 living there with his sister Elizabeth (20) and brother William (12), their father John Hogg living nearby in the same townland. By 1911, the house was recorded as a 3rd class dwelling comprising four inhabited rooms. The small outoffice shown on the second and third edition Ordnance Survey maps (1859–1903) may have housed a stable, cow house, piggery, or fowl house, as recorded on the 1911 census building return. This structure does not appear on the fourth edition maps of 1919–20; however, remnants have been incorporated into a modern return built in the mid-twentieth century.

In 1913, Hogg purchased the house outright. In 1919, it was divided into two dwellings, each valued at £1 5 shillings. Hogg converted the property to let one dwelling to lodgers at an annual rate of £3, though he remained recorded as the only occupant of both premises until the end of Annual Revisions in 1929. A 1978 survey described both Nos. 84 and 86 Dromara Road as a "single-storey double cottage with attic. Roof slated" and noted that No. 86 possessed panelled dormer window frames, with recent additions made to the property (though not specified to which house). The 1972 Ordnance Survey map indicates a small return was added to the rear during the mid-twentieth century, exact date unclear. The property was listed in March 1979, and in 1983 renovations were carried out to the roof and chimney.