20/22 High Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 3 bay wide, 2 storey mid-terrace house, slated roof back return.

Elevation to High Street, practically symmetrical with central arched doorway, 4 panelled, moulded door with pilasters, blocking pieces, scrolls and cornice. Panel mouldings have corner blocking pieces. Semi circular fanlight with heavy frame matching pilaster width, good ironmongery. To each side of doorway single 4 pane double hung sliding sash window with segmental heads.

Plain band stringcourse jointing 1st floor cills with 3, 4 pane double hung sliding sash square headed windows. Wall smooth rendered, painted, lined with plinth, frieze and straight quoins. Ogee gutter on corbel course, natural slated roof, moulded brick chimney stacks, single downpiece. Back return to rear with lean-to roof under main house gutter. Walls roughcast rendered unpainted. The building is a mid-terrace house observing the general building line.

The rear (W-facing) elevation is finished in dry dash and all of the windows have replacement PVC frames. The elevation is dominated by a broad, two-level return, the pitch of whose roof merges with that of the main section of the building. To the left on the ground floor of the return is a window whose opening appears to have been altered in recent years (the cill is a late 1900s concrete example). To the right of this is a doorway with flat-panel door. This doorway is accessed via a short flight of steps. To the upper level of the return there are two windows either side of a much larger elliptical-headed window. To the left of the return on the ground floor there is a small single-storey ‘porch’ extension with a large window and a partly glazed timber door and a lean-to roof of corrugated iron and PVC. To the right of the return there is another window, with two to the first floor (either side of the return).

To the W side of the roof there are four Velux windows.

PVC rainwater goods to rear elevation.

To the rear of the building there is a spacious yard enclosed to the W side by a low two-storey gabled outbuilding to which a large single-storey flat-roofed garage extension has been added. The outbuilding is now finished in dry dash (to the W side at least) and most of the original openings have been blocked up. The roof is slated.

Historical information

The terrace of which No. 20/22 High Street is part was probably rebuilt c 1870 to designs of W.J. Booth, though he was no longer company architect having retired in 1855 and died in 1871, had prepared designs much earlier (several variations). The terrace replaced an early one designed by Jesse Gibson (see ill. 35 in Curl’s Moneymore and Draperstown p. 58, 59). The houses built by George Tipping. House was probably sold by the company in c 1891 under Lord Ashbourne’s Act (The Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act 1885) (100% loan limit). The property was listed in 1975.

References

Primary Sources
1. O.S. Map 1832 Londonderry sh. 46.
2. O.S. Map 1832 Rev. 1856 Londonderry sh. 46.
3. Curl J.S. Moneymore and Draperstown. UAHS. p. 58, 59
4. Curl J.S. The Londonderry Plantation 1609-1914 p. 203, 221, 226, 230
5. Notes, 1st Survey, E.H.S. Hill Street, Belfast

Secondary Sources
1. Camblin G, The Town in Ulster p. 99.
2. The Oxford Companion of Irish History p. 295 (Lands Act)
Ed by S J Connolly

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

An interesting example of terrace house building of the mid Victorian era carried out by the Drapers’ Company in the Post Famine period to improve the quality and character of Moneymore’s High Street.