1 Shane's Terrace

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single storey terrace house with attic, built of basalt with brick dressings. Main entrance faces south-west.

Roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses; dark toned ridge tiles; one small original flush rooflight to left, with an original gabled dormer to right. Dormer roof slated as previous, with timber barge boards of fretted pattern; cheeks of dormer slated as previous; front of dormer contains a rectangular timber fixed light with a side-hung casement, all plate glass, set in a timber frame with horizontal boarding to gable above. Chimney on ridge of roof, to right-hand extremity, common with adjoining house to right: red brick with projecting brick cornice; four earthenware pots; two television aerials attached.
Wall of coursed hammer-dressed basalt rubble with fine jointing slightly recessed. Tooled arris to quoins at left-hand extremity. Projecting red brick eaves course. Cast iron guttering but no downpipe.

Front elevation contains one window to the right of the doorway, both set in red brick block surrounds with flat arch to head. Window is a rectangular timber sliding sash, vertically hung, 1 over 1 with horns, with exposed sash box; projecting stone cill painted. Doorway contains a modern rectangular timber 2-panel glazed door, with reeded glazing, set below a similarly glazed rectangular fanlight, all in a timber surround; modern aluminium handle and letterbox; three concrete steps to front door.

End gable contains two windows, one to ground floor and one to attic, similar to window on front elevation, but cills are of unpainted sandstone. Walling similar to entrance front with tooled arrises to quoins at each extremity. Oversailing eaves to roof, with sheeted soffits and decorative timber barge boards of similar pattern as previous. A modern steel door, to close the communal driveway to the rear, is mounted on the gable.

Rear elevation: of plain character comprising a blank rear wall to the right, with a projecting rear return to the left, with the main roof swept down over it: roof slated as to front elevation. Rear wall and wall of return is rendered with a wet dash of crushed stones; slightly projecting smooth rendered plinth; projecting smooth rendered eaves course. Render on rear wall stops short of right-hand extremity to reveal part of basalt quoining. Cast iron gutters to rear wall and return, with cast iron downpipes; PVC soil pipe on rear wall of front block and PVC waste pipe on rear wall of return. One window in return: modern rectangular timber fixed light with side-hung casement; projecting concrete cill. Doorway in side of return: rectangular modern flush timber with glazed panel of reeded glass; modern aluminium handle; two deep concrete steps to rear doorway.

SETTING: The house stands at the extreme left-hand end of a terrace of 14 houses which faces the main road but is set back from it with gardens in front. The houses alternate in pairs with handed plans. Front garden is grassed with a small gravelled strip alongside a concrete path to the front pedestrian gateway; also a concrete path across front of house. Gateway consists of a small modern painted iron gate set in plain circular posts with wooden finials. Front garden bounded by hedges, set behind a low basalt rubble wall to the left of the gate and along the left-hand perimeter. Rough stone driveway along end gable from street giving access to the communal rear driveway. Rear driveway gravelled, bounded partly on the north side by a basalt rubble wall with rough basalt copings and cement copings. Beyond rear driveway is a line of basalt rubble outhouses or garages. Garage for this house is one of a semi-detached pair: PVC rainwater goods; synthetic slates; modern flush timber garage doors.

Historical information

Built by the O'Neill family as one of a terrace of cottages for workers on the Shane's Castle estate; precise date of terrace not known, but it appears for the first time on the OS map of 1903, the entire site being shown as empty on the OS map of 1858. It may be tentatively dated to the 1860s. An old photograph shows diagonal pattern quarry glazing in both sashes of both windows in the west gable of the terrace, and the first survey in 1970 recorded that one house retained lattice paned sashes to the front and to the fanlight, which suggests that all windows were similarly glazed originally.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1903, Co Antrim 43.

Secondary Sources
1. UAHS, Antrim and Ballymena (Belfast, 1969), p 27 (item no 25).
2. R. Pierce and A. Coey, Taken for Granted (NIHBC, 1984), p 66.
3. DOE Planning Service, Randalstown Conservation Area booklet (Ballymena, 1996), pp 7 and 56-57 (old photographs showing the terrace).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

This is a distinctly proportioned mid-Victorian house in an overall plain style which has lost some of its original interior and exterior features, most notably the lattice glazing to its front and gable windows and front fanlight, but despite this, together with the rest of the houses in the terrace it still forms a group of definite character.