Canal Warehouse

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A canal store and adjoining house aligned E-W on the south side of the former Ulster Canal.

1. Store

The store is a large two-storey/ single-bay building, with pitched natural slate roof and dressed limestone verges and kneelers. The walls are of random rubble limestone brought to courses, with stepped dressed quoins and advanced eaves.

The principal elevation faces south towards the road. At ground floor centre is a wide doorway with dressed stone jambs and segmental brick head. It is flanked to each side by a shuttered window opening. These and all other window openings have flat brick heads, brick jambs, sandstone cills and wrought-iron security bars over. At first floor centre is a narrower loading door, with brick jambs and head. It, too, is flanked by a window opening to each side (above those to ground floor). There do not appear to have been rainwater gutters to this elevation (or the brackets have disappeared).

The left gable is abutted to left and centre by a two-storey house (see later). The exposed section is blank.

The north elevation was originally exposed at first floor level only, the canal bed being up against the outside face of the ground floor. The bed has been removed to reveal the facing wall. There is also a coped facing wall on the opposite side of the canal. At first floor centre of the block is a wide segmental door detailed as ground floor front. It is flanked by a window to each side. There are support brackets for rainwater gutters and a cast-iron downpipe at left.

The right gable is blank.

2. House

The roof and walls of this two-storey/ two-bay building are detailed exactly as the store. Some of the slates are missing to the rear pitch. There are remnants of a chimney on the W gable apex

The principal elevation faces south. All openings to this elevation have flat brick heads and stepped brick jambs. The windows also have sandstone cills but no security bars. There is a t+g door to centre, at the right-hand end of the left bay. There is a window to its left, and two windows to its right (1/1 sashes with horns). There are four regularly space windows to the first floor, in line with those below (all 1/1 sashes save one which is 3/1).

The left gable is blank.

The canal formerly ran along the outside ground floor face of the rear elevation; all the soil has been removed to reveal the stonework. The first floor is blank.

The right gable abuts the store.

Setting
The complex is enclosed to E, W and S by a random rubble wall. In the centre of the S wall, directly opposite the doorway into the store is an opening flanked by square dressed stone gate pillars (with shallow pyramidal caps); the left pillar has been damaged and the gate removed. The banks which formerly enclosed the canal have been removed.

Historical information

The Ulster Canal was constructed between Charlemont (Co Armagh) and Wattle Bridge (Co Fermanagh) between 1825 and 1842. The consulting engineer was William Cubitt and the principal contractor William Dargan (better known for his railways). This particular building is not depicted in the 1834 OS 6" map, and must therefore date to later in the same decade. It is cited in the 1862 second Valuation as “caretaker’s house and stores” and had the comparatively high valuation of £12. The canal was closed in 1931.

Primary sources:
1. OS 6" map, 1st edition (1834), Co Fermanagh sheet 43 (PRONI OS 6/4/43/1).
2. Second Valuation book, Clones Union, 1862, p.7.

Secondary sources:
1. W.A. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland (Belfast, 1980).
2. R. Delany, Ireland's Inland Waterways (Belfast, 1986).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
E. Spatial Organisation
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
V. Authorship
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

An unusual combination of buildings. The large store is of particular interest on account of its door configuration (in relation to the canal and road), internal spaciousness, flagging and first floor beam arrangement. Its functional relationship to the former canal is clearly evident. Few, if any, canal-related stores in N. Ireland are in such pristine condition, and only a few are to be found on the Ulster Canal.