8-9 The Diamond

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 3 bay wide end terrace building 2½ storeys, gabled with chimney stack. The ground floor has a single 4 panelled entrance door at each side with 6 pane office window to the E and 4 pane office window to the W each in wood. A name fascia above over doors and windows. A thin wood pilaster on both sides of each door. The first floor has 3 no. double hung sliding sash windows 12 panes with exposed sash boxes, evenly spaced across the façade with cills set on top of ground floor name fascia. Above each 1st floor window a dormer with 12 pane double hung sliding sash with sash box exposed but window having less height. The wall is carried up to form dormers which are gabled and sheeted. Cheeks of dormers are masonry plastered. Wall is smooth rendered, ruled, with quoins at each end and all unpainted. 4 aluminium round downpipes. Roof natural slates, wide gable chimney stack, simple ridge tile. There is no eaves overhang.

Wide gable with 2 windows at ground floor, one 12 pane double hung sliding sash and the other 6 pane double hung sliding sash each having protective metal grills. At 1st floor similar windows and likewise to attic floor. All the windows are to the S side of the gable and are haphazardly arranged. A large soil pipe dominates the gable. Centred on the gable a wide chimney stack with 4 low pots. Wall rendered smooth, unpainted and ruled. The slates barely overhang.

The rear wall has an irregular arrangement of windows 2 no. at 1st floor and 2 smaller windows under eaves, one of which is bricked up. There is a centre window, possible at 1st floor landing level. A high stepped wall, reaching to eaves level separates No. 8/9 from No. 7. There is no back returns and the yard is secured by a timber fence. The roof is slated with one wide velux type window to the W. It is gutterless.

The wall is rendered and partially painted. It looks as if a large shed abutted this rear wall with a “Belfast” type roof which coincided with the eaves. The wall is in a dilapidated state.

No. 8/9 forms part of a short terrace forming one side of The Diamond and faces N.

Historical information

There appears to have been a terrace of houses here from the mid 18th cent., but on comparing O.S. Map 1832 and the revision of 1856 this terrace appears to have been rebuilt in the intervening period as the house depths are greatly increased. This building housed the offices of the Nicholl coal and timber business until recently when it was purchased by the CWD (NI) Co Op who erected a new shopping building in Station Street, removing former terrace of houses.

The principal façade has been renovated in the 1990s. Compare illustration p. 52 UAHS Glens of Antrim. Dormers have been added and the shopfront altered in a traditional fashion on two occasions. The most recent in 2002. The Nicholl family resided in Fairhill Street and still do so since the early 19th cent. where they operated the saw mill by the Tow River. Part of the former Ballycastle may have occupied this site, though remains of the castle still stood adjoining the church in 1855. (see HB05/14/004 and HB05/14/005).

Precise date of building not known but it appears for the first time on the OS map of 1857; a much smaller structure appeared on the OS map of 1832.

References

Primary Sources
1. O.S. Map 1832 Antrim sh. 8.
2. O.S. Map 1832 Rev. 1856 Antrim sh. 8.
3. O.S. Memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of Co Antrim IX, 1830-2, 1835, 1838-9
Ed by Angelique Day, Patrick McWilliams and Noirin Dobson. p. 93, 94.
4. Former owner.
5. Notes of 1st Survey, EHS Hill Street, Belfast

Secondary Sources
1. UAHS Glens of Antrim p. 46, 52 (ill.)
2. Ballycastle Conservation Area Booklet DOE, EHS.
3. Richardson, A Guide to Ballycastle and Neighbourhood. p. 17.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is a 3 bay wide end terrace building 2½ storeys high originally erected in the mid-19th century. It has lost a number of its original features and most of its original character and appearance as a result of incremental changes. It stands as a building of no special architectural or historic interest. Additional alterations to neighbours has reduced the group value of the terrace.