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

No. 1 Brick Row is a modest one-and-a-half-storey, two-bay, end-of-terrace house built in red brick with blue brick and red sandstone dressings, constructed around 1872 to 1874, most likely to designs by architect William James Watson. It forms the first house in a coherent terrace of six similar dwellings on the north-west side of Horner's Lane, off Bridge Street, within the Rostrevor Conservation Area.

The terrace faces south-east and is fronted by a shared gravelled area bounded along Horner's Lane by a random-coursed rubble stone wall with rock-faced coping, with a vehicular entrance to the east. The houses are grouped into symmetrical pairs, each pair sharing a recessed semi-circular arched doorway at the centre. Open porches are formed by continuous over-sailing eaves supported on decorative timber brackets, flanked on either side by narrowly projecting gabled bay windows. Each pair of houses shares a dormer, with each individual dwelling contributing a single diminutive window to the shared dormer. Rectangular-section red and blue brick chimneys rise to apex level. Both the gabled bay windows and the dormers are finished 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 detailing. Window openings are square-headed with red sandstone heads and splayed red sandstone sills, and are fitted with top-opening timber casement windows. The pitched roof to the front block is covered in natural slate, graded in size with larger slates at eaves level tapering to smaller slates near the apex, and finished with angled terracotta clay ridge tiles. Eaves are narrowly projecting with exposed painted timber rafter ends.

On the principal south-east-facing front elevation, No. 1 has a painted sheeted timber door with brass furniture opening onto the open porch at the south-west end, framed by decorative painted timber posts with decorative trefoil brackets. The door opens onto a concrete platform reached by a granite step from the shared gravelled yard. Centred above the paired porches, the shared dormer has a diminutive side-opening timber casement window with a horizontal glazing bar. To the north-east side of the porch, a narrowly projecting gabled bay window contains paired top-opening timber casement windows at ground-floor level with a sandstone head, and above this a semi-circular red sandstone arch with a flush herringbone-pattern brick spandrel. Modern red brick walling abuts the north-east side of the elevation, featuring blue brick bands and a semi-circular headed gateway leading to a private yard and the north-east gable end, with detailing similar to the gable but executed in buff brick.

The north-east gable has a smooth cement-rendered finish with a chimney at the apex. This chimney has nine courses of blue brick to its upper half and a single terracotta clay pot. An abutting building appears to have been recently demolished. The south-west elevation is attached to No. 2 Brick Row.

To the rear, the north-west-facing elevation is partly obscured but consists of a full-width two-storey red brick extension with a pitched natural slate roof, added around 1994, which extends north-west from the rear wall of the original dwelling to meet the shared access passage. The first floor of the rear return projects further north-west than the ground floor, supported by red brick walling to the north-east and a painted metal pillar to the south-west. Below this projection is a partially covered concrete yard accessed through a painted metal pedestrian gate to the south-west, with modern block-work infill walling to the south-east of the gate. The ground floor has a top-hung timber casement window; the gable has a four-part timber casement window. A narrow corridor at the north-east leads south-east from the covered yard section to the back door. The south-west elevation of the rear return has a single top-opening casement window to the first floor above the covered rear yard. The rear return is generally built in Stretcher Bond red brick with timber casement windows and slim concrete sills. The rear return is considered somewhat overbearing and detrimental to the original architectural quality of the building. Rear facades along Brick Row generally are much altered with various extensions of differing shapes and sizes.

Rainwater goods on the front elevation include a cast iron downpipe shared with No. 2, while the remainder of the building uses uPVC half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The terrace is bounded to the front by the rubble stone wall along Horner's Lane and to the rear by a high stone retaining wall. A square stone pillar and rubblestone wall mark the entrance to the terrace from Horner's Lane and contribute to the character of the setting. To the south-west end of Brick Row, on a raised site, sits a pair of two-and-a-half-storey red brick semi-detached dwellings that bear a resemblance to Brick Row but are considerably larger and differ in some details.

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 William James Watson had designed four new houses intended to form the first portion of a terrace for Edward Greer, with construction carried out by Alexander Whelan, a Newry-based building contractor whose tender of £1,550 was accepted. The Irish Builder subsequently noted that the terrace had been completed by at least May 1874, and it was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in that year. Watson was a local architect who practised almost exclusively in south County Down, operating from Newry, Warrenpoint and Rostrevor.

No. 1 Brick Row was originally valued at £3 and initially leased to a Mr Francis Taggart by the Greer estate. By the turn of the 20th century the house was occupied by James Feron, a local shepherd. The 1901 Census of Ireland building return classified it as a second-class dwelling comprising three rooms with no outbuildings to the rear. Occupancy changed frequently over the following decades. By the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland, conducted between 1936 and 1957, the rateable value had risen to £4, and ownership of the row had passed to a Mr Francis Morrow by the 1930s. By the end of the Second General Revaluation, conducted between 1956 and 1972, the total rateable value stood at £5 and 5 shillings, with the house recorded as owned by a Mr Daniel Rooney but lying vacant.

Nos 1 to 6 Brick Row were included in the Rostrevor Conservation Area in 1979 and listed in 1981. The construction of the terrace took place during a period of rapid development in Rostrevor from the mid-Victorian period, which also coincided with the arrival of the tramway from Warrenpoint in 1875 and the construction of the Rostrevor Hotel the following year.

The house originally possessed a single-storey flat-roofed extension to the rear, which was replaced around 1994 with the current two-storey return. Around 2001 the house underwent an extensive renovation that included the restoration of the red brick wall and entrance gate to the north-east side of the property.