10 BRIDGE ST.

The Department's description

Historical information

This site is shown developed on the OS map 1834. The valuation book of the following year is difficult to decipher but it suggests that this plot was at that point taken up by a relatively ‘new’ public house, then occupied by John Tumelty and measuring 29ft x 25 x 17 with office of 29½ x 17½ x 9; a gateway is also mentioned, although at this stage it is not certain whether this access - and the room(s) over it - appears to have belonged to this property or that to the west.

The property is recorded in the 1861 valuation as a ‘grocery and public house and coal yard’ in the hands of Charles Sloan, with the dimensions noted as 10yds x 8½ x 2 with a portion ‘over gate’ of 2? x 6? x 1, office of 8½ x 5½ x 1½, coal shed measuring 14½ x 8 x 1 and stable of 5 x 5 x 2. Mr Sloan (or Sloane) was succeeded as tenant by Bernard Dunne in 1866. At this same date the rateable value of the property was lowered from £19 to £14, whilst simultaneouly the rateable value of the neighbouring concern to the west (present day no.8 Bridge Street) increased from £5 to £10. This was most likely due to the fact that the section over the archway appears to have been transferred (or returned to) to the latter at this date, as borne out by various late 19th and early 20th century photographs, all show which the archway belonging to no.8.

Mary McGivern became tenant in 1891 and by Edward and Mary Cole in 1897. In the 1901 census, Edward, a 38yr-old publican, is noted as living here with Mary (his wife), their infant daughter, Edith, and a domestic servant, with the building itself noted as a ‘1st class’ public house with 9 rooms in use by the family. The Coles were followed by another Charles Sloan, (presumably a relation of the earlier occupant), with a member of the Sloan family was occupying the property in 1972.

The archway and the space over it was in possession of no.8 Bridge Street when both it and no.10 were surveyed as part of the First Survey of Historic Buildings in Northern Ireland in December 1969, but since then has become part of the latter once again.

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 PRONI VAL3C/4/23, 1936-57
14 OS map, Co. Down sheet 54, 1950
15 PRONI VAL4B/3/81, 1956-72
16 OS map, sheet 277, 1979