26 New Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A two-storey, three-bay house with rendered walls and decorative barge boards. Main entrance faces west.

Entrance elevation: roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses, with dark toned ridge tiles. Two chimneys, one to each gable: yellow brick with moulded details to cornice; two pots each. Walling is replacement smooth cement render, lined and blocked, with slightly projecting plinth and projecting coved eaves course. There is a gable over the central entrance bay with projecting eaves carried on a pair of shaped brackets; painted wooden panelled soffits; decorative barge boards with cusped patterning incorporating pierced quatrefoils and trefoils.
Cast iron gutters and downpipes.
Central doorway recessed in a moulded segmental arched opening with keystone. Rectangular timber 4-panel door, modern replacement for original, flanked by 3-pane sidelights and surmounted by a 4-pane fanlight with octagonal panes; cement doorstep, below level of pavement.
Three windows to first floor and two to ground floor, one each side of doorway; all windows rectangular timber sliding sash, 6 over 6 with horns, set in rectangular moulded surrounds rising from projecting painted cills.

North gable: smooth cement rendered, lined and blocked, with raised quoins to extremities; slightly projecting plinth. Overhanging eaves supported on two pairs of shaped brackets; plain wooden panelled soffits; decorative barge boards of similar design to previous. One window to ground floor and one to first floor, both similar to entrance front, including surrounds, but no horns to first floor. Two small attic windows, round-headed timber sliding sash, 1 over 2 with short stub horns; projecting painted stone cills.

Rear elevation: two-storey, three-bay; roof of what looks like Bangor blue slates in regular courses with a small area of repair work in what looks like synthetic slates; two original rooflights; two chimneys, one to each gable, in yellow brick with moulded brick cornice.
Walling rendered with a wet dash of crushed black stones; PVC gutter and downpipe; PVC soil pipe.
Three windows to first floor, rectangular timber sliding sash, 6 over 6 with horns, set in exposed sash boxes; painted stone cills; plain rendered reveals.
Central doorway to ground floor, with one window to each side. Window to left is similar to first floor; window to right is a later rectangular metal fixed light with casement. Doorway contains a rectangular glazed timber door surmounted by a plain rectangular fanlight; two concrete steps.

South gable is replacement smooth cement render, lined and blocked with quoins to extremities. Overhanging eaves with decorative timber barge boards similar to previous. One window to ground floor and one to first floor sashed as previous, with horns, but set in plain reveals; projecting painted stone cills.

SETTING: The building stands within the built-up area of the town, at a street corner, facing onto a street but set back from it with a pavement in front; one gable directly overlooks the side street.
Extending to the right from its entrance front is a rendered front boundary wall to the rear garden. Grassy rear garden is bounded on the south by a low rendered wall with the steel security fencing of a police station tight behind it; bounded on east side by the rendered wall of an adjacent property; bounded on north side by a basalt rubble wall which is rendered at the end where it extends from the house; rendered portion contains a rectangular timber sheeted door. At the other end the wall contains a pair of square brick piers with basalt rock copings, but in poor condition, mounted with a pair of corrugated iron doors. On the inner face of the wall within the garden is a lean-to roofed outbuilding.

Historical information

Built c 1842 to replace a smaller building on the site; the design of its barge boards appears to derive from an illustration in Augustus Pugin's 'Ornamental Timber Gables from existing examples in England and France' (1839); badly damaged in a terrorist bomb explosion in 1989 which required some of the barge boards to be replaced.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1858, Co Antrim 43.

Secondary Sources
1. UAHS, Antrim and Ballymena (Belfast, 1969), p 23 (item no 7).
2. Antrim Borough Council, Historic Antrim and Randalstown: heritage trails leaflet (Antrim, 2000).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
I. Quality and survival of Interior
Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

This is a fine early Victorian house which retains its original exterior features including elaborate timber barge boards.