31 Ann Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 2 bay wide 2½ storey house with basement and shopfront. The ground floor has a 4 panelled door with knocker and letterbox, with worn sandstone step. On each side pilasters with elongated panelled pedestals above rococo detail, capitals and scrolls all nicely modelled. Above the door a segmented headed fanlight. The shop window with large centre plate glass and curved glass corners is divided with slim mullions with shaped and patterned corner pieces. Above the segmental head small lights picking up the door fanlight. The name fascia forms a shallow canopy over entrance door and window with square corners highlighting the curved glass corners below. The fascia capped with good cornice. Lettering reasonable. Good colour scheme. Low cill line.

At first floor 2 no. double hung sliding sash 2 pane windows centred on elevation. Wall finished in smooth rendering unpainted. A shallow plain frieze below ½ round metal gutter. Natural slated roof with gable chimneystack. On the roof 2 fine gabled dormers with open fretwork barges and spiky finial. Dormers begin just above main gutter which shares gutter with No. 33.

To the right of No. 31 an entry leading to carpark behind. Gable smooth rendered and unpainted. The rear of the building has a 3 storey flat roofed back return not quite the width of the house and includes the extended basement. The return has a collection of modern windows and doors, wall smooth rendered and painted.

The rear roof slope of house has a single dormer, off-centre, gabled, plain barges, 2 pane window, top section top hinged. Roof natural slates.

No. 31 occurs at a bend in Ann Street. The footpath is quite wide and crudely paved with mixture of paving slabs and bitumen macadam and manholes. A poorly presented surface to a pleasing shopfront.

Historical information

The building probably erected c 1880s and the shopfront probably added in the period 1900-1919. The house was upgraded in 1987 when it was grant aided.

References

Primary Sources
1. O.S. Map 1832 Revised 1856 Antrim sh. 8.
2. O.S. Map 1904 Ballycastle.
3. Notes, 1st Survey E.H.S. Hill St, Belfast

Secondary Sources
1. UAHS Glens of Antrim p. 51.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
C. Ornamentation
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A 2½ storey late 19th century terrace house with a bowed shopfront and ornamented dormer windows of interest for the architectural design and ornamentationof its façade which is well preserved and complemented by the surviving internal fabric and buiing form. It is of additional interest as part of a group of two buildings in the streetscape.