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

No. 5 Brick Row is a modest one-and-a-half-storey, two-bay red-brick terraced house, built around 1872–74, most likely to designs by William James Watson, a local architect who practised almost exclusively in south County Down, operating from Newry, Warrenpoint and Rostrevor. It forms part of a coherent terrace of six similar dwellings (Nos. 1–6 Brick Row) situated on the northwest side of Horner's Lane, off Bridge Street, within the Rostrevor Conservation Area. The house is L-shaped on plan, faces southeast, and is attached to No. 6 Brick Row on its southwest side and No. 4 Brick Row on its northeast side.

The terrace is well proportioned and robustly detailed, and represents a good example of small-scale domestic Victorian architecture. The six dwellings are grouped into symmetrical pairs, each pair sharing a recessed semi-circular arched doorway at its centre. Open porches are formed by continuously over-sailing eaves supported on decorative timber brackets, and are flanked on each side by narrowly projecting gabled bay windows. Each pair of houses shares a dormer, with each individual dwelling having a single diminutive window to that 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.

Walling is generally in English Garden Bond red brick with a red brick plinth and single courses of blue brick 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 to the front elevation. Windows are typically top-opening timber casements. The pitched roof to the front block is covered in natural slate graded in size, with larger slates at eaves level reducing towards the apex, and finished with angled black clay ridge tiles. Eaves are narrowly projecting with exposed painted timber rafter ends. Rainwater goods on the front elevation are generally cast iron with half-round guttering discharging to circular-section downpipes.

The principal southeast-facing front elevation features a painted sheeted timber door with black iron furniture, opening onto the open porch at the southwest, which is framed by decorative painted timber posts with decorative trefoil brackets. The door opens onto a concrete platform accessed via a granite step from the shared gravelled yard to the southeast. The dormer window centred above the paired porches contains a diminutive side-opening timber casement window. The narrowly projecting gabled bay window to the northeast side of the porch has paired top-opening timber casement windows at ground floor level beneath a sandstone head, with a semi-circular red sandstone arch above and a herringbone-pattern brick flush spandrel panel.

To the rear northwest elevation, there is a full-width flat-roofed dormer extension at first floor level, two bays wide, abutted by a single-storey L-plan flat-roofed rear return. This rear extension was constructed around 1982 to designs by an unknown architect and is finished in pebbledash render. The flat roof of the dormer extension is covered in a felt membrane and extends from the ridge to the rear wall of the original dwelling, incorporating two skylights. The single-storey block extends northwest to meet the shared rear access passage and has a three-part timber casement window to its northwest end. The main building has a top-opening timber casement window at ground floor level to the right (southwest) side looking into a narrow lowered section of concrete yard. The single-storey rear return has a painted sheeted timber half-door with black iron furniture and a small glazed section to its upper half, facing right (southwest) into the narrow yard, and incorporates a decked roof terrace with a turned timber balustrade and acorn finial newels. Two openings are visible at first floor level in the dormer room extension, overlooking the roof terrace of the rear return. Rainwater goods to the rear return are uPVC.

The rectangular-section red brick chimney to the northeast side has nine courses of blue brick to its upper half and is topped by two terracotta clay pots. The building underwent a subsequent interior renovation around 1997.

The terrace is fronted by a shared gravelled area bounded along Horner's Lane by a random-coursed rubblestone wall with rock-faced coping, which further enhances the character of the setting. There is a vehicular entrance to the east of this gravelled parking area. The site is bounded to the rear by a high stone retaining wall. The rear facades of the terrace as a whole 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 to the southwest end of Brick Row; these bear a similarity to Brick Row but are considerably larger and differ in certain details.

The flat-roofed rear extension and dormer added around 1982 are considered out of keeping with the original quality and style of the building.

The terrace was constructed 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 the acceptance of a tender of £1,550 submitted by Alexander Whelan, a Newry-based building contractor, for the construction of four new houses forming the first portion of a terrace designed by Watson for Edward Greer. The Irish Builder subsequently noted the terrace's completion by at least May 1874, and the terrace was first recorded in the Annual Revisions in that year. The construction of the terrace coincided with a period of rapid development in Rostrevor during the mid-Victorian period, which also saw the arrival of the tramway from Warrenpoint in 1875 and the construction of the Rostrevor Hotel the following year.

No. 5 Brick Row was originally valued at £3 by the Annual Revisions and was initially leased to a Mr. J. McManus by the Greer estate. By the turn of the 20th century the house was occupied by William Lynas, a local settmaker. The 1901 Census of Ireland building return described No. 5 Brick Row as a second-class dwelling consisting of three rooms with no outbuildings to the rear. The occupants changed with great frequency 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 end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value stood at £5 and 5 shillings, at which time the building was occupied and owned by a Mr. Hugh McCamley. Nos. 1–6 Brick Row were included in the Rostrevor Conservation Area in 1979 and were subsequently listed in 1981. The extent of the listing covers the house and its walling.