11 High Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 3 storey, 2 bay wide, mid-terrace house with shopfront, part of a symmetrical composition, faced with dressed ashlar stonework.

The ground floor of the High Street façade consists of a pleasing shopfront with central 2 panel glazed aluminium door with large display windows on each side with plain painted plaster panels under window cill and with a single large iron grill under one ventilating basement. Above door and windows blank panels, narrow pilasters, topped with scrolls support a painted name fascia trimmed on top with scalloped leadwork. The name fascia extends over the plain fanlighted, 4 panel door to upper floor accommodation. 2 steps ascend to floor level.

At first floor 2 double hung sliding sash 12 pane windows and over at second floor 2 6 pane double hung sliding sash windows of almost square proportion. Wall above shopfront faced with ashlar sandstone, ½ round gutter, natural slates on roof, stone faced chimney stack with neat moulded cornice. Between No. 11 and 13 the stonework is recessed for trunkhead and downpipe, the latter in cast aluminium unpainted.

The rear of the building is partly obscured by a single storey flat roofed back return. The upper floors have a 4 pane double hung sliding sash window at 1st floor and directly over a 6 pane double hung sliding sash window. Also at 1st floor an oculus and above a semi-circular headed 16 pane double hung sliding sash window both lighting staircase within. Wall faced with coursed white limestone at upper levels, ½ round gutter, natural slated roof. There is a slight recess in wall at staircase.

No. 11 is part of an overall symmetrical composition fronting onto High Street and screening the market yard from it.

See illustration in Camblin’s Town in Ulster for the ground floor shopfronts c. 1950.

Historical information

No. 11, terrace house is part of the 2nd market project carried out in Moneymore by the Drapers Company. It was designed by the Company’s architect, William John Booth, a most ambitious scheme and probably a white elephant. O.S. Memoirs refers to it. “The Company are erecting a very handsome and capacious grain store and another market house, which is expected to cost from 5000 to 6000 pounds”. The Company’s map of Improvements proposed by the Deputation of 1839 shows the formal arrangement of the complex bound on the west and north by High Street and Market Street respectively. The corn store today illustrates the underuse of the project, plans of which were prepared in 1835 on the proposal of Bridger who said there was a need for such. The project was completed in 1839. “The whole pile of buildings is extremely well executed, has a most striking and ornamental appearance and is admirably calculated for the purpose to which it is intended”.

The building was listed in 1975 and was occupied by Moneymore Co-op Agricultural & Fruit Growers Society. In 1991 the present occupier of the shop (2000) occupied the premises and carried out improvements and repairs in 1993. His architect was Ballydrum Design of Westcliff-on-sea, Essex.

References

Primary Sources
1. O.S. Map 1832 Londonderry sh. 46.
2. O.S. Map 1832 Rev. 1856 Londonderry sh. 46.
3. O.S. Memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of Co Londonderry XI, 1821, 1833, 1836-7, p. 38
Ed by Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams, QUB
4. Curl J.S. Moneymore and Draperstown UAHS.
5. Curl J.S. The Londonderry Plantation 1609-1914 p.215
6. Notes, 1st Survey, E.H.S. Hill Street, Belfast

Secondary Sources
1. Rowan A North West Ulster, Buildings of Ireland p. 425
2. Camblin G, The Town in Ulster Ill 58 facing p. 81.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
Z. Rarity
V. Authorship
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

An ashlar stone faced mid-terrace house with good recent shopfront, part of a fine neo-classical composition in late Georgian style and in a good state of repair.