19-21 High Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 3 storey semi-detached 2 bay wide red brick house with shopfront, gabled, slated, back return.

The ground floor has shopfront with separate 6 panelled painted door with 3 pane fanlight with thin pilaster on each side with slim cornice. Painted strips of rendering between jambs and pilasters. The shopfront has a central framed door, single upper panel glazed with plain deep fanlight. On each side large single pane display window with shallow horizontal pane over. Beneath display window cills smooth rendered and painted panels. Pilasters frame windows and door and over a painted name fascia with end scrolls, bottom and top mouldings and scalloped lead flashing over fascia. 2 steps rise to both doors and there is a low plinth.

At 1st floor, 2, 6 pane double hung sliding sash windows with segmental heads, windows spaced to suit semi-detached arrangement. Each sash is divided vertically in 3, matching fanlight (fanlight to shop has lost the glazing bars). At 2nd floor similar windows directly over but of lesser height. ½ round metal gutter on brick corbel which terminates against a corbelled brick kneeler. Trunkhead under kneeler with unpainted downpipe. Wall fixed street lamp adjacent. Walls redbrick in Flemish bond, cut soldier courses over windows, mortar natural colour. Cills sandstone painted. Roof natural slates with upstand barge to gable, brick chimney stack with tall clay pots.

Gable wall windowless roughcast rendered, red brick chimney stack centred with 6 no. pots. In line with front wall of house a gateway with square pier against gable and round pier other side, both roughcast rendered.

Back return similar to No. 15/17 with 2 storey lean-to roof, 1 bay long with 2 bay long single storey part in line with lean-to shed and then 2 storey stone built outbuildings. The back return has a spine wall shared with No. 15/17. Across the narrow yard further sheds.

On the rear wall of the main house the former ground floor window/door has been bricked up. At 1st floor a modern window frame has been inserted and similar at 2nd floor. The window over the lean-to roof is unchanged. Windows to back return double hung sliding sash 2 and 4 pane.

No. 19/21 with No. 15/17 form a matching semi-detached pair in line with the neo-classical terrace of the market house and fronts on to a broad footwalk to High Street. This footwalk is currently being relaid as part of an Environmental Improvement Scheme.

Historical information

In 1862 a deputation of the Draper’s Company visited Ireland and Daniel Magee, builder, who had done other work for the Drapers, “was requested to prepare plans of houses in the High Street at the corner of the land leading to Hammond Road (Market Street corner) ……. instructed to base his plans on the houses designed by Booth on the opposite corner of the lane” (Houses on the north side of Market Street). Magee clearly followed his own design. Nos 15/17 and 19/21 replaced earlier houses. The back return was put on later in the century as it is shown on the 1906 O.S. Map. The shop has been a drapery since 1968 and previous to that a grocery owned by a Devlin and before that a Bradford.

The building was listed in 1975. Shopfront was renovated in 1991 and other repairs carried out.

References

Primary Sources
1. O.S. Map 1832 Revised 1856 Londonderry sh. 46.
2. O.S. Map 1906 Londonderry sh. 109
3. Curl J.S. The Londonderry Plantation 1609-1914 p. 226.
4. Notes, 1st Survey, E.H.S. Hill Street, Belfast

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

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

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A semi-detached redbrick house with good shopfront of 1860s, illustrating a good example of 19th cent. infill taking cognisance of adjoining Market house in respect of height and building line and handling of shop front.