28 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 Richard Reynolds, measuring 24ft x 21 x 15, with a thatched outbuilding to the rear of 16 x 13½ x 6. By 1838 Andrew Knight is recorded as the occupier.

In the 1861 valuation John Emerson (‘shoemaker’) is recorded as the occupier, leasing the property from the representatives of Thomas Savage, with the dimensions of the building noted as 8yds x 7 x 2[storeys] with an outbuilding of 5½ x 3 x 1.

In 1868 Daniel McNulty is listed as the tenant, followed by Anne Cole in 1897 and John Cole in 1900. In the 1901 census, Mr. Cole is recorded as a 50yr-old ‘pensioner’, living here with his wide, Bridget, their six children, and a boarder, with the building itself described as a ‘2nd class’ dwelling and shop with six rooms in use. According to later street directories, the Cole’s shop was a grocery store.

The Daniel Cole is named as the tenant in 1929, and according to the valuation records, was still living here in 1972.

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