26 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 ‘not new’ house, then occupied by Owen Feran (‘butcher’), measuring 17½ft x 21½ x 15, with a section over a gateway of 9 x 21½ x 6. Similar dimensions (9yds x 7 x 2[storeys] including the gateway) are recorded in the second valuation of 1861.

The occupant in 1861 is recorded as David McNulty. He was succeeded in 1870 by John Cole, with William Blackwood the next tenant in 1872, Elizabeth White in 1873, Peter Fagan in 1875 and Margaret Cull in 1906. In 1911 Daniel McAlinden is noted as the tenant and at the same date the the rateable value was raised from rose from £6 to £10 and the property begins to be referred to as a ‘house [and] shop’. All of this suggests that major alterations - possibly even rebuilding - took place at this time. Moreover the fact that the breadth of the present frontage does not match that recorded in 1834 and 1861 could indicate that the plot size was reduced at this time also.

Charles Sloan is noted as the occupant in 1913, Peter Jones in 1920, John Dresden in 1921, Margaret Marrinan in 1922 and William J. Parr from 1940 until at least 1972.

The pitch of the roof, and the fact that the chimneystacks are now located in the slope rather than on the ridge, suggests there were further significant alterations to this building - and probably also its neighbour to the west (no.24 Bridge Street) in the later 20th century.

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