14-20 Main Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A two-storey building, six windows wide to the first floor, with the entire ground floor presenting a broad modern shop front flanked each end by modern panelled doorways. Main entrance faces north.

Roof slated, with three chimneys, two in modern red brick and one rendered. Wall to first floor is smooth cement rendered with rusticated quoins to extremities. Windows to first floor are modern rectangular timber fixed lights with top-hung vents, set in square surrounds with keystones; projecting painted cills. Plaque on wall states "On this site stood the original market house erected in 1770 by Lord O'Neill. The building was destroyed by fire during the 1798 rebellion." Shop front woodwork incorporating panelled piers is all new replacement.

SETTING: The building stands in the main street of the town, within a terrace, facing directly onto the pavement.

In the first survey in 1971 the building was described as "A two-storey, six bay, terrace with lined rendered walls, raised quoins, slated roof and brick chimneys. Upper windows are set in square moulded openings. All windows are double hung with full glazing bars. The lower storey presents a double shop front with consoled fascia, a modernised shop front, a panelled street door with margined fanlight and a plain window in surround similar to upper storey."

Historical information

Precise date of building not known but it appears on the OS map of 1858, built to replace an earlier building on the site which appeared on the OS map of 1829 as the 'Old Market House'. That original market house had been built in 1770 by Lord O'Neill; it was described in the 1830s as "a plain, uninteresting-looking building, 2-storeys high and measuring externally 60 by 25 feet"; it opened to the street by three large, circular arched gateways with iron gates. It had been used at one time for holding manor courts and petty sessions, and during the rebellion of 1798 the lower storey was used as a stable by the cavalry.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1829, Co Antrim 43 ('Old Market House' named).
2. OS Map 1858, Co Antrim 43.
3. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 19: Parishes of County Antrim VI, 1830, 1833, 1835-8 (Belfast, 1993), pp 47, 83.

Secondary Sources
1. UAHS, Antrim and Ballymena (Belfast, 1969), p 24 (item no 14).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is a building which has undergone a number of inappropriate alterations and although occupying a site of some historic interest, is itself of no architectural or historic interest.