1 Inns Court, Park Lane, Hillsborough, Co Down, BT26 6AQ

No. 1 Inns Court is an end-of-terrace, two-storey rubblestone house built around 1800, situated in the historic centre of Hillsborough village, between Park Lane and the Dromore Road. It is the northernmost of a terrace of four similar houses and is set within a cobbled cul-de-sac enclosed by tall rubblestone walls with stone coping. The front door faces west onto this cobbled court, while the rear garden is shared with the adjoining No. 2 Inns Court and is enclosed towards Park Lane by further tall rubblestone walls.

The building is square on plan. Its pitched roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, redbrick chimneystacks at either end, and two rooflights to the rear pitch. Rainwater goods consist of replacement metal guttering on iron brackets fixed to a brick eaves course. The walls are of random rubblestone construction with squared granite quoins and redbrick surrounds to all openings. Window openings are square-headed, formed in redbrick with stone sills, and fitted with 2/2 timber sash windows with exposed sash boxes. The front elevation is two windows wide and has a square-headed door opening formed in redbrick, fitted with a replacement vertically-sheeted timber door. The north gable has a single door and window opening, with a vertically-sheeted timber door leading onto a small cobbled area. The rear elevation has a single window opening to each floor: the upper floor retains an original 6/3-pane timber sash window with a timber lintel, while the ground floor has a replacement timber casement window; a former door opening at the rear has been blocked up in redbrick. The south elevation is abutted by the adjoining No. 2 Inns Court.

The building has group value with Nos. 3 and 4 Inns Court and, together with No. 2, forms part of an intact terrace of Georgian utilitarian character. Internally, it has been significantly altered: at some point around 1980 Nos. 1 and 2 were interconnected on both the ground and first floor to create an art gallery, and the two properties remain interconnected. Despite this alteration to the original layout, the building retains its modest historic exterior features and is considered to be in a good state of preservation overall.

The history of No. 1 Inns Court is well documented. The terrace first appears on an illustrated plan of Hillsborough dated around 1800, at which time it was occupied by a Mr. Hanna. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 and the contemporary Townland Valuation map of around 1830 both depict the building as a square structure on West Lane — a court off what was then known as Inns Lane, later called Park Lane. The Townland Valuation records the house as valued at less than £3, making it exempt from valuation. By the time of Griffith's Valuation of 1861 — which records the lane as Barrack Court — the first named occupant was a Mr. Samuel Wattley, who vacated that same year. His successor, Mr. Samuel Donaldson, held the house from the Marquis of Downshire at a weekly rent of ninepence; the house was described as a first-class B dwelling measuring five and a half by four and a half yards, valued at £2. Donaldson remained until 1886, when a Ms. Eliza Maguinness took up residence for a decade. In 1896 Robert Paisley came into possession; the 1901 Census records him as a 34-year-old Anglican general labourer living at No. 1 Barrack Court with his wife Mary Jane and their four young daughters. The Census Building Return described the house at that time as a second-class dwelling with two inhabited rooms and no outbuildings; by 1911 little had changed, though the number of rooms recorded had increased to four. Paisley remained until 1918, when he and his family moved to No. 2 Park Street. A succession of short-term occupants followed until Mr. James Turner took possession in 1924 and remained until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930.

The name Barrack Court — formerly applied to what is now known as Inns Court — has two suggested explanations. C. E. B. Brett, writing in 1974, noted he was unaware of any barracks in the immediate area to justify the name, but suggested that the officers of the South Down Militia, whose headquarters were at No. 7 The Square, may have quartered their grooms, batmen and other auxiliary staff in these houses. This theory is supported by a map of Hillsborough dated around 1800, which records a Commissary yard — used to store army provisions and possibly horses — on the south side of Barrack Court, where the Shambles now stands; it is also noted that Nos. 3 and 4 Inns Court were formerly used as a store and office, though whether this was for army use is not known. An alternative explanation, offered by Simon Walker, is that the name derived from a former barracks situated in Moira Street to the west of the houses, which was closed around 1820 when the area was enclosed within Hillsborough Castle Grounds. In his 1974 survey, Brett described Nos. 1 to 4 Inns Lane as two-storey houses of stone with brick trim, and noted that most windows had been unhappily altered and that the upper pair, Nos. 1 and 2, had been very aggressively re-pointed.