46 Main Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A symmetrical street-fronted three-bay two-storey terraced house pre-dating 1830, located east of Main Street in the centre of Scarva Village. Rectangular on plan with two-storey return to rear.

Pitched natural slate roof with blue/black angled ridge tiles and rendered chimneystacks. uPVC rainwater goods. Walling is painted smooth render on projecting smooth rendered plinth. Windows are enlarged replacement timber casements throughout with projecting sills.

The principal elevation faces west and is three windows wide to each floor (opening to first floor centre is narrower). To centre at ground floor is a replacement six-panelled timber door with square-headed overlight and sidelights, accessed via three stone steps. To first floor is a cast-iron balcony on supporting brackets incorporating windows to centre and right.

The north gable is abutted by adjoining building (HB17/03/033).

The east (rear) elevation was not accessed.

The south gable is abutted by adjoining building (HB17/03/035).

Setting

Sited at the centre of Scarva, opposite the junction with Station Road, forming part of a terrace which includes St Matthews Parochial Hall (HB17/03/033). To rear of the building is St Matthews Church (HB17/03/037), the spire of which is visible over the roofline.

Roof: Natural slate
Walling: Render
Windows: Replacement timber
RWG: uPVC

Historical information

The building, now a dwelling, was formerly a Temperance Hotel and shop. It has been altered and its age is uncertain but its location near the bridge over the canal suggests it may be one of the earlier buildings in the town as this was where the early development of Scarva was concentrated. Buildings are shown on the site on Taylor and Skinner’s map of 1777 and visual inspection of the rear of the building indicates that some early fabric remains.

The village of Scarva was founded, beside the newly-opened Newry Canal, in 1746 by John Reilly of Scarva House and it is likely that some of the current buildings along Scarva’s Main Street date from this period. The impetus for building the town came from the opening of the Newry Canal in 1742 to connect Carlingford Lough with Lough Neagh, principally as a means to bring coal from east Tyrone to Dublin speedily and inexpensively. (McCutcheon) John Reilly, the founder of the town procured a patent for holding fairs and markets, in anticipation of building the town, and to build a small dock and quay, but by 1875 the market was no longer being held. The 1797 Topographica Hibernica describes Scarva as a ‘small neat village’ with a large ‘salt work’. Fairs were held four times a year. Capper’s Topographical Dictionary gives the population of Scarva in 1829 as 170 living in 33 houses. By 1875 traffic along the Newry Canal was bringing cargoes of turf to Scarva, using the dock and quay for lighters. (Knox) The population remained reasonably steady over the course of the nineteenth century and in 1910 was 157. (Street Directory)

A building with return is shown on the site on the 1st edition OS map of 1834 and is listed in the Townland Valuation of 1828-40 as a house, offices and yard, occupied by Wright and Cunningham and valued at £4. Griffith’s Valuation lists the house as a general shop and post office run by Robert Taylor and leased from John T Reilly. It is a house office, yard and garden, valued at £10.15s on a lease of 999 years. The rent was £3.10s annually and dimensions are given for the house, two-storey return and a two-storey tower to the rear. In 1878 the premises was extended into the two neighbouring houses, now number 48, which were all valued together at £15.5s and later directories and photographs show that the house was run as a Temperance Hotel and grocer’s shop with the post office in the neighbouring houses. On the third edition of 1903 the buildings are captioned ‘P[ost] O[ffice], ‘Hall’, Hot[e]l’.

Bassett’s County Directory of 1886 states that Mr Robert Taylor’s garden, which had a private door into the churchyard of St Matthew’s ‘has no rival in the county. It is handsomely planted with shrubs and flowers and has many well shaded resting places in the course of the climb to the top of the hill. One of these is a tea-house, the principal chamber in a castellated building defended by mock cannon.” The Directory carries an advertisement for Robert Taylor’s post office which also sold groceries, provisions, china, glass and delft, books and stationery and farm and garden seeds. Taylor was a news agent and an emigration agent and ran a Temperance Hotel and Refreshment Rooms with ‘good accommodation for tourist parties’.

Young and Quail’s collection of photographs of Scarva shows several views of the Temperance Hotel, which by the turn of the twentieth century had acquired its wrought-iron balcony, still present today. The images show the hotel with a metal sign attached along the roof-line and the original door openings and fenestration, which had radically altered by the time of the first survey in 1975. There were originally two doorways, both giving access into the hotel, but one also opening into the grocer’s shop and the left-hand side of the building bore a sign ‘Taylor. Grocer.’ with a multi-paned shop window beneath. There were originally 5 window openings to the first floor. Young and Quail record that it was Robert Taylor who built the castellated tower to the rear of his building (now gone) as a tourist attraction. It was intended to suggest General Monk’s castle which had been demolished at the time of the building of St Matthew’s Church.

Towards the end of his life, Robert Taylor achieved national fame due to his longevity. Although his exact age remained uncertain, in 1898 newspapers throughout the British Isles reported that Mr Robert Taylor the postmaster of Scarva had reached an age of between 114 and 134. He was said to be ‘Her Majesty’s Oldest Subject’ and it was noted that he could rehearse many exciting scenes in his early life as a Volunteer and could still sound his old Volunteer bugle call. Robert Taylor’s fame spread to Queen Victoria who sent him a framed portrait of herself due to his ‘almost unprecedented age’ and asked for his photograph in return. (Dundee Courier) Robert Taylor died on 25th July 1898, while still holding the postmastership of Scarva, and his death was reported as the ‘Death of the Oldest Man in the Three Kingdoms’. (Freeman’s Journal)

The 1901 street directory lists as one of the principle buildings of the town, the Methodist Mission Hall erected by the late Mr Robert Taylor, the aged postmaster, on his private grounds. Taylor also ran a ‘most comfortable, homelike temperance hotel and bathroom in conjunction with which is a post office with money order and telegraphic departments. At the rear of the hotel is erected a tower, from which the tourist can have a most commanding view of the surrounding country.
After Robert Taylor’s death the premises was taken over by his wife Mary Anne Taylor (1902) (will of Robert Taylor) and subsequently by Samuel J Mimms (1907) Mary Anne Taylor (1908) Thomas W Dunlop (1919) and Marjory Dunlop (1920) remaining in the Dunlop family until at least the 1950s.

The 1901 census lists the postmistress as Mary Anne Taylor, Robert Taylor’s widow. She is living with her sister, Eliza Dunlop who worked in the shop and she employed a 17-year-old girl as a telegraph clerk. A cousin was also living with them and working as a bookkeeper. By 1911 the occupier was Thomas Wilson Dunlop, a relative of Mary Anne Taylor. He was a general merchant who ran the premises as a shop and temperance hotel. He lived with his young American wife and also living at the house were a domestic servant and two young girls of 16 and 19 who were working as a grocer’s apprentice and a postal assistant respectively.

At the time of the First General Revaluation in 1933/4 the building had been converted back into a dwelling house with a combined shop and post office operating in the adjacent building at number 48. Marjory Dunlop is the occupier then Ann Brierly Dunlop in fee and the premises, which includes the neighbouring property, is a house, shop, office, post office and garden. The buildings are revalued at £35. Living accommodation comprises a kitchen, scullery, 3 rooms, 4 bedrooms, a bathroom and 2 box rooms. The house is said to be in good decorative and general repair but badly planned.

The house continues in use as a dwelling.

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/3/33/1 First Edition OS Map 1834
2. PRONI OS/6/3/33/2 Second Edition OS map 1860
3. PRONI OS/6/3/33/3 Third Edition OS Map 1903
4. PRONI OS/6/3/33/4 Fourth Edition OS Map 1903-18
5. PRONI VAL/2/B/3/55D Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64)
6. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/22A-D Annual Revisions (1864-1929)
7. PRONI VAL/3/C/4/3 - First General Revaluation (1936-57)
8. PRONI VAL/3/D/ 4/3/S/6 – First General Revaluation (1933-57)
9. Huddersfield Daily Chronicle March 7th 1898
10. Irish Times 3rd May 1898
11. Dundee Courier & Argus 4th May 1898
12. Belfast Newsletter 23rd June 1898
13. Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser 27th July 1898
14. Taylor and Skinner’s Map of the Roads of Ireland, 1777
15. Capper, B.P. “A Topographical Dictionary of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland” London: Sir Richard Phillips and Co, 1829
16. Seward, W W “Topographica Hibernica” Dublin, 1797
17. Young, A F and Quail, D “Old Gilford, Scarva, Loughbrickland and Lawrencetown” Stenlake Publishing, 2002
18. Street Directory, 1910

Secondary Sources

1. Knox, Alexander, M.D. “A History of the County of Down” Dublin: Hodges, Foster & Co, 1875
2. McCutcheon, W.A. “The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland,” London: HMSO, 1980.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A symmetrical street-fronted three-bay two-storey nineteenth-century terraced house, formerly the Temperance Hotel. Extensively altered and refurbished over the years and with a modern interior, much of the original character has been compromised. Although significant in the locale, the more recent alterations, together with loss of historic fabric and detailing, have compromised its architectural and historic interest.