Houses on Quinton Avenue

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A development consisting formerly of pairs of single-storey cottages with harled and whitened walls, hipped slated roofs with wide overhangs, and timber sliding sash windows, but now all altered in a variegated manner. Window frames, wall finishes, some roof forms and some storey heights have been changed so that they do not appear as a coherent group.

Setting: the houses stand in a rural location facing directly onto a side road set back from and parallel to the main road, with long gardens in front of them.

Historical information

Nos 34 to 45 appear on OS map of 1857 and were called Dandy Row.

Nos 46 to 61 appear on OS map of 1921 and were called Quintin’s Row.

Nos 34 to 45 were built in 1834 by John Irving, owner of the Magheramorne estate at that time, as labourers’ cottages, part of a scheme of 12 double cottages, the rest being located on Shore Road. Described at the time as being “on a very improved and neat plan ... Each single cottage or rather the dwelling of each family, contains 3 roomy apartments, each lit by a spacious lattice window. Their floors are of earth. They are plastered and their roofs are rendered. They have good chimneys, and their general plan is such as to render them dry and warm. Their projecting eaves and pretty windows give them an exceedingly neat appearance.”

References - Primary Sources

1. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 26: Parishes of Co Antrim X, (Belfast, 1995), pp 19 and 24.
2. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 41.
3. OS Map 1921, Co Antrim 41.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A group of late Georgian and Victorian cottages which have been so altered as to retain few if any of their original features and are no longer of any architectural interest.