23/25 High Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 2½ storey, 3 bay wide, projecting gabled bay, shopfront with lean-to back return, red brick and slated house.

The entrance to High Street has a breakfront asymmetrical gable to the south and contains the Post Office shopfront, not quite centred on the gable, the remaining 2 bays contains the house entrance and a ground floor canted bay. The shopfront has a central pair of timber framed and bolection moulded 2 panel narrow door, over a plain fanlight. On each side large high single pane display windows, with narrow pilasters framing door and windows with neat stylised capitals. Over a painted name fascia with end scrolls, fascia board and bottom moulding. Fascia protected with plain lead flashing. Below the window cills, brick panels with a series of small metal ventilation grills. Above the shopfront and centred on the gable but not on the door below, a 2 pane double hung sliding sash window. Good barge boards with finial, expressed purlin ends, and moulding under slate overhang. To the side of the shopfront, fixed to brickwork on a level with name fascia 2 enamelled signs :

Post Office
Money Order Office
Savings Bank
Insurance and Gratuity Office

Postal Telegraph Office

The entrance door, 4 panelled, set in framed screen with small bottom moulded square panel and vertical glazed panel with fanlight over divided in 3 and the whole screen set in a segmented arched opening. To left of door a single storey slated and canted bay with 3, 2 pane double hung sliding sash windows, the centre one almost twice the width of the others. Centred over door and bay 2, 2 pane double hung sliding sash windows. Timber fascia with ½ round gutter, slight overhang, walls redbrick in Flemish bond, returned onto S gable in brick quoins. S gable finished in roughcast rendering unpainted, the remainder of walls in facing brick including back return.
The S gable has a ground floor sheeted door pair with 3 pane fanlight over. A 4 panedouble hung sliding sash window at 1st floor and a small 2 pane double hung sliding sash attic window under barge overhang. Good barge boards and expressed purlins and finial. N gable has 2 pane double hung sliding sash window off-centre at ground and first floor directly over each other and a round headed 2 pane double hung sliding sash high up in gable apex. Roof natural slates with red ridge tile, a single square red brick chimney stack with 4 pots, centred on ridge in line with canted bay.

At the rear the lean-to 2 storey return occupies 2 bays approximately from the N faced in red brick and has an assortment of double hung sliding sashwindows, 2 of which occur on the main house block, the rear roof slope of which has modern rooflights and a single one on the lean-to roof. A further single storey return occurs at the N end.

No. 23/25, though a detached house, observes the building line of the High Street and its brick finish is in keeping with its southerly neighbour.

Historical information

The house was built in 1906 for the grandfather of the present owner and he was a veterinary surgeon and an MRCVS. The house is shown on the 1906 O.S. Map. The property has remained in the same family throughout the century and the Post Office is indicated on this site in the same O.S. Map.

References

Primary Sources
1. O.S. Map 1906 Londonderry sh. 109.
2. Present Owner.
3. 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
I. Quality and survival of Interior
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

A typical medium size early 20th cent. detached house with quasi Edwardian exterior detailing and reasonable Post Office shopfront retaining early signage. The interior, redolent of Victorian detailing is very well preserved. The building, though different in form, fits in reasonably well with its neighbouring buildings.