4 Brick Row, Horner'S Lane, Rostrevor, Co.Down

No. 4 Brick Row is a modest one-and-a-half-storey, two-bay Victorian terraced house built in red brick with blue brick and red sandstone dressings, constructed around 1872–74, most likely to designs by architect William James Watson. It is L-shaped on plan, faces south-east, and forms part of a coherent row of six similar dwellings on the north-west side of Horner's Lane, off Bridge Street, within the Rostrevor Conservation Area.

The terrace was built on land leased by Edward Greer, a local solicitor and magistrate who resided at Moygannon. Three earlier houses located to the rear of Bridge Street were demolished to make way for the new row. In September 1872 the Irish Builder recorded that Watson had designed four new houses intended as the first portion of a terrace for Edward Greer, with construction carried out by Alexander Whelan, a Newry-based building contractor who submitted a tender of £1,550. The Irish Builder confirmed the terrace had been completed by at least May 1874. Watson was a local architect who operated in Newry, Warrenpoint and Rostrevor and practised almost exclusively in south County Down. The terrace was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1874 and was included in the Rostrevor Conservation Area in 1979, with the buildings subsequently listed in 1981.

No. 4 Brick Row was originally valued at £3. It was initially leased to a Mr. William Lynas by the Greer estate. By the turn of the 20th century the house was occupied by John Bradley and his family. The 1901 Census of Ireland building return described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of three rooms with no outbuildings to the rear. Occupants changed frequently over the following three decades. By the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the rateable value had risen to £4, and ownership of the row had passed to a Mr. Francis Morrow by the 1930s. By the close of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value stood at £5 and 5 shillings, with the house owned and occupied by the Misses Annie Tomen and E. Doyle.

The terrace was constructed as part of the rapid development of Rostrevor during the mid-Victorian period, coinciding with steady population growth in the village, the arrival of the tramway from Warrenpoint in 1875, and the construction of the Rostrevor Hotel the following year. The majority of listed buildings in Rostrevor date from the early to mid-19th century, making this row, dating from around 1874, a somewhat later addition to the village's built heritage.

The six dwellings are grouped into symmetrical pairs along the terrace. Each pair shares a recessed semi-circular arched doorway at the centre, with open porches formed by a continuous over-sailing eaves line supported on decorative timber brackets. These porches are flanked by narrowly projecting gabled bay windows. Each pair of houses also shares a dormer, with each individual dwelling having a single diminutive window to the shared dormer. Rectangular-section red and blue brick chimneys rise to apex level. The gabled bay windows and dormers are both fitted with decorative pierced painted timber bargeboards.

The walling is generally laid in English Garden Bond red brick with a red brick plinth and single blue brick courses at window sill and impost levels. Door and window jambs have stop-chamfered brick detail. Window openings are square-headed, with red sandstone heads and splayed red sandstone sills to the front elevation. Windows are typically top-opening timber casements.

The pitched roof to the front block is covered in natural slate with angled black clay ridge tiles. The slates are graded in size, with larger slates at eaves level graduating to smaller slates at the apex. Eaves are narrow with exposed painted timber rafter ends, and rainwater goods are generally metal with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The principal south-east-facing front elevation features a painted sheeted timber door opening onto an open porch at the north-east end, formed by the over-sailing eaves and framed by decorative painted timber posts with decorative trefoil brackets. The door opens onto a concrete platform decorated with polychrome clay tiles, accessed via a granite step from the shared gravelled yard to the south-east. A dormer window centred above the paired porches contains a diminutive side-opening timber casement. The narrowly projecting gabled bay window to the south-west side of the porch has paired top-opening timber casement windows at ground-floor level with a sandstone head, a semi-circular red sandstone arch above, and a herringbone-pattern brick flush spandrel panel. The gables have decorative painted timber bargeboards.

No. 4 Brick Row is attached on the south-west to No. 5 Brick Row and on the north-east to No. 3 Brick Row.

A flat-roofed dormer room extension was added at first-floor level to the north-west rear elevation around 2009, extending the full width of the original dwelling from ridge to rear wall and clad in horizontally sheeted timber. This extension has a single skylight. The rear elevation is abutted on the south-west by a single-storey rendered rear return extending north-west to the boundary with the shared rear access passage. A narrow concrete yard lies to the north-east side of the rear return. The rear elevation of the main block has a painted sheeted timber door with a glazed top half at ground-floor level, painted timber sheeting at first-floor level, and smooth cement render walling at ground-floor level. The rear return has two top-opening timber casement windows with slim concrete sills opening into the yard, and a three-part timber casement window to its rear north-west elevation. The dormer extension has a window and a painted timber door with glazed top and bottom halves at first-floor level, opening onto the flat roof of the single-storey rear return.

The rectangular-section red brick chimney to the south-west side has nine courses of blue brick to its upper half and two terracotta clay pots. The flat roof of the dormer extension is felt-covered. Rainwater goods to the single-storey rear return are uPVC.

The terrace is fronted by a shared gravelled area with a vehicular entrance to the east. This area is bounded along Horner's Lane by a random-coursed rubble stone wall with rock-faced coping, which further enhances the character of the setting. To the rear, the site is bounded by a high stone retaining wall. The rear facades along Brick Row are generally much altered, with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes. A pair of two-and-a-half-storey red brick semi-detached dwellings is located on a raised site at the south-west end of Brick Row; these bear a similarity to the Brick Row houses but are considerably larger and have some significant differences in detail.

While the addition of the flat-roofed extension and dormer to the rear are out of keeping with the building's original quality and style, No. 4 Brick Row nonetheless remains well proportioned and robustly detailed, and as part of this coherent row of six similar dwellings represents a good example of small-scale domestic architecture from the Victorian era.