3 Inns Court, Park Lane, Hillsborough, County Down, BT26 6AQ

No. 3 Inns Court is a mid-terraced, two-storey rubblestone house built around 1800, situated in the historic centre of Hillsborough village, County Down, close to the main Square. It is one of a terrace of four broadly identical houses and has group value with its neighbours at nos. 1, 2 and 4 Inns Court. The building sits within its original cobbled cul-de-sac off Park Lane, enclosed by tall rubblestone walls, and is a good example of a Georgian utilitarian terrace building.

The house is square on plan, facing west onto the cobbled cul-de-sac, with a single-storey rear extension and conservatory added later. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, and there is a single red brick chimneystack to the south. Metal rainwater guttering on iron brackets is fixed to a brick eaves course. The walls are of random rubblestone construction with red brick surrounds to all openings. The front elevation is two windows wide; window openings are square-headed, formed in red brick with rendered reveals, stone sills, exposed sash boxes, and replacement two-over-two timber sash windows. The front door opening is also square-headed and formed in red brick, fitted with a replacement vertically-sheeted timber half door. The north elevation abuts no. 2 and the south elevation abuts no. 4. The rear elevation is not visible. The rear extension and conservatory are screened from Park Lane by a tall rubblestone wall, and the front door opens onto the cobbled cul-de-sac, which is enclosed towards the Dromore Road by a tall rubblestone wall with stone coping.

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 no. 3 as an oblong building on West Lane, which was then a court off Inns Lane, as Park Lane was known at the time. The Townland Valuation recorded the house as being valued at less than £3, making it exempt from valuation.

Originally, no. 3 formed a single property with the adjoining no. 4, and the combined building was used as offices and a storehouse until the two were converted into separate dwellings in 1895. In Griffith's Valuation of 1861, the property — by then known as nos. 3–4 Barrack Court, the name by which West Lane was known from around 1860 — was first recorded as offices and then amended in the same year to a store. The valuation recorded the building as a one-bay-plus store measuring ten and a half by four and a half yards, valued at £3, and let from the Marquis of Downshire by a Ms. Sarah Lutton, who herself resided at no. 8 The Square. Sarah Lutton continued to hold the store until her death in 1869, when her son Samuel Lutton inherited all her property. Samuel Lutton remained in possession until his own death in 1882. In 1883 a Mr. Robert Johnston took possession of the store, and it was during his occupancy that the building was divided into two houses in 1895. No. 4 Barrack Court continued to be occupied by Robert Johnston, while no. 3 passed first to a Mr. Joseph Waters in 1895 and then to Samuel Lilly, whom the 1901 Census records as a 36-year-old Anglican labourer living there with his wife Catherine, aged 38, and their two young daughters.

The 1911 Census Building Return described the house as a second-class dwelling comprising five rooms, with a piggery and workshop as its only outbuildings. By 1911 the house had passed to James Henry Thompson, a 62-year-old Presbyterian mason, who lived there with his wife Eliza, aged 57. Following her husband's death around 1911, Eliza Thompson vacated the house, which passed in 1912 to a Mr. Arthur Walker, who resided there for a decade. The final recorded occupants were a Mr. Thomas Green, who lived there between 1921 and 1928, and Henry McKeown, who came into possession in 1928 and remained there at least until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930.

The origin of the name Barrack Court has been the subject of some discussion. C. E. B. Brett noted the name but was unaware of any barracks in the immediate area to account for it, and suggested instead 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 — a theory given some support by a map of 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, which may explain why nos. 3 and 4 were formerly used as a store and office, though it cannot be confirmed that the building was used for army purposes. Simon Walker, by contrast, suggested 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. Writing in 1974, Brett described nos. 1–4 as two-storey houses of stone with brick trim, noting that most windows had been unhappily altered and that the upper pair, nos. 1 and 2, had been very aggressively repointed.

The house was extensively renovated around 1990, resulting in the loss of some original fabric, though it retains its modest historic character to the exterior, remains occupied, and is in a good state of preservation. It forms part of an intact terrace and sits within the Hillsborough conservation area.