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

30 Main Street is a mid-terrace two-storey rendered house built around 1760, forming an important part of the historic streetscape on Main Street, Hillsborough. Originally constructed as one of a pair with No. 28 Main Street, it represents an early Georgian townhouse of considerable architectural and historical significance.

The building is rectangular on plan, facing west across the east side of Main Street. It features a pitched natural slate roof with black clay ridge tiles, a redbrick chimneystack, and cast-iron rainwater goods on iron brackets to the brick eaves course. The walls are rendered in painted rough-cast with a deep projecting plinth course and plain render quoins.

The front west elevation is three windows wide. Square-headed window openings with smooth render surrounds and painted masonry sills contain replacement 9/6 timber sash windows with exposed sash boxes. The central entrance is a square-headed door opening with smooth render surround, set back within two concrete steps, fitted with a replacement panelled timber door and rectangular overlight. The single ground-floor window displays an early twentieth-century style bipartite fixed-pane timber window with concrete sill. An elliptical-headed carriage arch opening with early vertically-sheeted timber doors sits at ground level, serving the integrated coach house function.

The north side elevation is abutted by No. 28 Main Street, while the south side is abutted by No. 1 The Square. The rear elevation incorporates a catslide roof to a rear projection with pebbledash rendered walls and uPVC windows.

The property retains a lofted single-bay former coach house to the rear, featuring a pitched natural slate roof, rubblestone and redbrick walling, sheeted doors, and a flight of stone steps. The original large rear garden is now in the ownership of No. 28 Main Street.

Cartographic evidence from around 1800 shows the building as an oblong structure with two large office buildings in the yard. By 1800, Nos. 28 and 30 appear to have formed a single property owned by Mr. McPherson, valued at £10. The 1834 Townland Valuation map and first edition Ordnance Survey map indicate that the two large rear offices had been replaced by the current outbuilding, which served as a coach house and stables. Griffith's Valuation of 1861 records the owner as Reverend James Moorhead, who let the house to Mr. John Foots at £9 rent. The building was classified as 1B two-storey, measuring four by eight yards and valued at £6 10 shillings, with a large single-storey kitchen of five by four yards and a 'Forge office' of similar dimensions in the single-storey rear return.

Between 1864 and 1879 the Marquis of Downshire came into possession of both properties. In 1872 Robert McCarthy, an embroidery agent, occupied No. 30, followed by Mr. Robert Heron in 1878. The 1901 Census records Thomas Balmer, a 47-year-old shoemaker, resident with his wife Ellen and four children, operating a shoemakers shop from the property with the rear outbuilding used as stable and barn. Balmer remained until his death around 1927; his widow continued occupation until 1930.

Despite the loss of much original fabric, the front elevation has been sensitively restored. The original coach arch survives, though Georgian glazing bars were added after the 1975 First Survey. The ground-floor window replacement with twentieth-century style glazing occurred around the same time. A small single-storey extension has been added to the rear return. The former stable and coach house survives in use as a shed, though the rear roofing has been replaced with corrugated iron.

The house remains in use as a private residence and is historically significant as one of the earliest Georgian townhouses on Hillsborough's Main Street, having been continuously occupied for 250 years. It constitutes an important part of the heritage of the area, set among a terrace of varying dates and scale lining the main street as it rises to meet The Square.