Butcher's shop

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single storey butcher’s shop of 1914 by Hobart & Heron, with ornate free Baroque arcaded façade with tiling ceramic animal head detailing. The building is wedged into the terrace at the junction of Dromore Street and High Street.

The front façade faces roughly S and consists of two large semicircular openings, with a modern window frame to both but with that to right incorporating a modern glazed door also. Both openings have panelled stall risers faced. The stall risers are faced in dark green ceramic tiles which continue to arch springing level. Above this the tiling has been painted.

The arches have a moulded egg & dart course with keystone. In the central spandrel is a 3-D ox’s head with bas-relief ram’s heads to the outer spandrels. Above arch level is a frieze with dentilled cornice. A signboard has been placed upon the frieze with the owner’s names spelt out in raised plastic lettering (in a typeface popular in the 1970s).

The façade is topped with a parapet with short panelled end piers and a central curving Baroque gable with edge moulding and scrolls and a kidney shaped decorative cartouche thereon.

Behind the parapet there is a slated gabled roof.

No access to rear. From map evidence it appears that the actual rear elevation is very small and the rear of the main buiulding is completely obscured by an narrow outbuilding extension, which links to a larger outbuilding to the N.

Historical information

This butcher’s shop was built for a Mr Coulter in 1914, to designs by Hobart & Heron. The tiles to the front were made by Middleton Fireclay Works of Leeds and were originally terracotta coloured above arch springing level, but were painted some time after 1974. The shop was later sold to the Carlisle family, who subsequently sold it to the present owners.

References- Primary sources
1 Linen Hall Library ‘Irish Builder and Engineer’ 1914, p.159

Secondary sources
1 C.E.B. Brett, ‘Historic buildings…Mid Down’ (Belfast 1974), p.39

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
C. Ornamentation
H-. Alterations detracting from building
I. Quality and survival of Interior

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Single storey butcher’s shop of 1914 by Hobart & Heron, with ornate free Baroque arcaded façade with tiling ceramic animal head detailing. The upper section of tiling was originally terracotta coloured but was painted white c.1970s.