6 BRIDGE ST.

The Department's description

Historical information

This site is shown developed on the OS map 1834. The 1835-36 valuation tells that at that point the building later known as no.6 Bridge Street was a dwelling of 15 x 20 x 17 occupied by Eleanor Nolan. It was classed by the valuers as ‘not new’ which in their reckoning denoted a structure that they knew, or thought to be over 25 years old at that point.

No.6 is recorded in the 1861 valuation as a private house with a ‘bad inside finish’, measuring 5 x 6? x 2 and occupied by Margaret Burns. The valuers record Miss Brennan as the tenant in 1866, followed by John McAnulty in 1875, Ellen McQuade in 1877, Mary [?McCreash] in 1888 and William Kaye 1889. In the 1901 census the the property is recoded as a shop, with the Kaye family (59yr-old grocer, William, his wife, Jane, and their two teenage children) living in no.8. By 1909 the Kayes had relocated here from no.8, with William, now a widower and employed as a gardener, occupying the property with two of his grown-up children, a son-in-law, and five grand children. William Kaye appears to have died in of just before 1917 and his son-in-law, John White, is named the householder in 1923. The White family were succeeded by Catherine Farrell in 1956, who was still occupying the property in 1972.

No.8 and no.6 Bridge Street were separate properties when Rostrevor was surveyed as part of the First Survey of Historic Buildings in December 1969, and were both listed as such in September 1981. Both were amalgamated at some point after this date and 1994.

BRIDGE STREET In origin, Bridge Street was part of the road from Kilkeel, connecting the latter with the original roads to Rathfriland (present Greenpark Road) and to Newry (a route which appears to have followed present Warrenpoint Road before heading inland along today’s Rath, Donaghguy and Greenan Roads). Oliver Sloane’s County Down map of 1739 shows the settlement of Rostrevor comprising solely of buildings along the northeastern side of the road, suggesting that this side of of Bridge Street may well mark the earliest part of the village. Development on both sides of the street is shown on an estate map of 1767 and Williamson’s 1810 county map, and this had reached its present extent by the time the 1834 first edition OS map. Known in the 1830s as ‘Post Office Street’, owing to the presence of that establishment, this title had been modified to ‘Old Post Office Street’ by 1861, and finally in c.1894, to ‘Bridge Street.

The 1836 OS Memoirs describe the street as ‘leading from the centre of the main street in a south easterly direction to the bridge of Rostrevor…155 yards long, 95 feet broad at its broadest or north and western end and 25 feet at its narrowest part next [to] the bridge. The houses are of 2-storeys, in good order, all used for shops and having furnished lodgings for the accommodation of strangers.’

References - Primary sources
1 PRONI T1763/2 Map of County Down by Oliver Sloane, 1739
2 HERoNI Map of County Down by James Kennedy, 1755
3 PRONI D671/M7/2 Map of Rostrevor and surrounding lands, 1767
4 ‘A Map of the County of Down…by James Williamson, (1810)
5 OS map, Co. Down sheet 54, 1834
6 PRONI VAL1B/361 (1835-36)
7 Day, Angelique and McWilliams, Patrick ed. ‘Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland…vol.3’ (QUB, 1990), p.35 (1835-36)
8 PRONI VAL2B/3/61C (1861)
9 PRONI VAL12B/19/21A-F (1865-1929)
10 Census of Ireland, 1901, 1911 [http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie, accessed 2020.06.30]
11 ‘Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory’, (Belfast, various dates, 1910-19)
12 OS map, Co. Down sheet 54, 1919
13 ‘Belfast Telegraph’, 19 December 1934, p.3
14 PRONI VAL3C/4/23, 1936-57
15 OS map, Co. Down sheet 54, 1950
16 PRONI VAL4B/3/81, 1956-72
17 OS map, sheet 277, 1979