2 Glenmore Terrace, Mill Street, Hilden, Lisburn, Co.Antrim, BT27 4RW

2 Glenmore Terrace is a two-bay, two-storey terraced house built around 1860. It forms part of a rare surviving terrace of five similar houses, built on Mill Street in Hilden for overseers at the adjacent Glenmore Bleach Works. The house retains its original external appearance and contributes significantly to the character of the terrace as a whole, with each house holding particular group value alongside the other listed properties in the row.

The building is constructed of redbrick laid in Flemish bond with cement pointing and a projecting plinth course. It has an L-shaped plan on the ground level, including a two-storey return to the rear, and is set back slightly from the north side of Mill Street with an enclosed front garden.

The roof is pitched with natural slate, featuring a pair of wall-head dormers with ogee-arched window openings formed in polychromatic brick. These dormers are fitted with 3/3 timber sash windows incorporating gothic tracery to the upper sash. The roof has round black clay ridge tiles and lead valleys, with redbrick chimneystack complete with clay pots. Deep overhanging eaves are finished with decorative timber bargeboards to the dormers, featuring tall finials. Ogee-moulded cast-iron guttering and cast-iron downpipes complete the external treatment.

The front elevation has two bays. The ground floor contains a square-headed window opening with an original 6/6 timber sash window with cylinder glass and painted masonry sill. A square-headed door opening to the right has a plain painted masonry surround containing a replacement flush timber door with rectangular overlight, opening onto an original nosed sandstone step. The remainder of the window openings are ogee-arched and square-headed with original timber sash windows, cylinder glass and painted masonry sills.

The front garden is enclosed to the road by a low rubblestone wall with painted stone coping and redbrick piers with ogee sandstone capstones supporting an iron pedestrian gate.

To the rear, the house features a narrow two-storey rendered return abutted to the west side. A single wall-head dormer matches the front elevation design, with square-headed sash windows to other openings and uPVC windows to the return. A small rear yard is enclosed by a rendered wall with glazed roof and timber sheeted door, opening onto three concrete steps to the common rear area and garden to the north.

The houses do not appear on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 but are listed in Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, confirming their construction around 1860. They were leased from Richardson, Sons and Owden, linen manufacturers. The larger size and finer quality of these houses compared to other workers' housing on the street—such as Richardson's Row, Bridge Street and Mill Street—indicates they were designed for overseers or foremen.

The Richardson family were among the oldest linen manufacturing families in the north of Ireland, settling in the early seventeenth century. Shortly after their arrival they became Quakers and, like other important linen families, intermarried within the sect. Jonathan Richardson (1756–1851) pioneered winter bleaching at Glenmore, allowing year-round operation and substantial business growth. In 1830 the family acquired and amalgamated a further adjoining bleach green. Jonathan's eldest son James took John Owden as a partner, founding the company J.N. Richardson, Sons & Owden. James died in 1847 after purchasing Lambeg House and renaming it Glenmore in 1835. Mr Owden appears to have been the prime mover in constructing Glenmore Terrace. Jonathan's brother, John Grubb Richardson, purchased an estate in County Armagh where he built the model village of Bessbrook with large spinning and weaving mills that worked in conjunction with the Glenmore works. The Richardsons demonstrated consistent concern for the social and moral welfare of their workers, extending to providing good-quality housing.