Former Town Hall and clock tower,

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A two-storey building of rectangular plan with a three-storey clock tower projecting forward at one end. Main entrance faces east.

Entrance elevation is five windows wide with a sixth window in the projecting tower at the left-hand extremity. Roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses, with a chimney at each end gable; chimneys smooth rendered.
Walls smooth rendered, lined and blocked, with a slightly projecting plinth and raised quoins to extremities. Cast iron gutter and downpipe. Four circular iron tie bar cramps to the exterior at door head height.
Windows are rectangular timber sliding sash, 6 over 6 with horns, recessed in raised white limestone block dressings with chamfered reveals and splayed cills.
Door in second opening from right is rectangular panelled timber set in a moulded wooden frame.

Adjoining tower is of similar walling with similar window and door surrounds; oversailing crenellated parapet to top. Ground floor window now walled up and rendered, lined and blocked. Circular limestone block surrounds to clock face on front and sides; clock faces to front and right-hand side, but only painted imitation clock face in ocular panel of smooth render to left-hand side facing south.

South gable, visible above the adjoining former railway bridge: rendered with pebble dash.

Rear of tower is smooth rendered, lined, and blocked with smooth rendered raised quoining; cast iron downpipe, broken.

Rear elevation of main block: of limestone rubble, but half of it is later rendered; roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses; square chimney stack to rear in old brickwork, with one original pot. Cast iron guttering.

North elevation: end gable of main block has wall rendered with dry dash of mixed pebbles, with raised quoins to left-hand extremity, and smooth cement strip to right-hand extremity. One window to ground floor, timber sashed as previous to front, but set in smooth rendered reveals, with projecting sandstone cill, fractured.

SETTING: The building stands in the main street of the village, facing the harbour, with a former railway bridge adjoining it at one end and the walkway of the former railway track permitting views over it at both front and rear. The plot to the rear is in very poor order.

Historical information

sBuilt in 1855-56 by Frances Anne Vane, Marchioness of Londonderry, as a town hall, with its clock tower added later as it appears without it on the OS map of 1857. Interior destroyed in the 1970s; refurbished in the 1980s for use as a public library.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 25.

Secondary Sources
1. UAHS, Glens of Antrim (Belfast, 1971), pp 19-20, and 21 (but the author conjectures an erroneous date).
2. M. McSparran, C. Dallat and J. Irvine, Oh Maybe it was Yesterday (Glens of Antrim Historical Society, 1980), p 16.
3. DOE (NI), Carnlough Conservation Area (1981).
4. P. Magill, Garron Tower (Belfast, 1990), pp 57 and 61.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is a mid-19th century building of distinctive style and proportions but which has unforunately lost a number of its exterior features as well as all its original interiors.