5 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 pots; two television aerials attached; front face of chimney has pointing crudely executed.
Wall of coursed hammer-dressed basalt rubble with jointing crudely applied and slightly smeared over the masonry in places. Projecting red brick eaves course. Cast iron guttering with one cast iron 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 rectangular timber sheeted door, set below a plain glazed rectangular fanlight, all in a timber surround; modern metal doorknob and letterbox; one concrete step to front door.

Rear elevation is two-storey with the original rear wall and rear return built up beyond original height: Bangor blue slates to rear roof above later extension; flat roof to extension.
Walls rendered with a wet dash of crushed black stones; timber fascia to eaves; PVC gutters and downpipe; PVC soil pipes; modern rectangular timber windows, fixed lights with top-hung vents, all double glazed; thin projecting concrete cills. Rear door in side of return is modern rectangular flush timber with glazed panel. Recessed area between rear wall and return is concrete.

SETTING: The house stands in 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 concrete path to the front pedestrian gateway and across front of house. Gateway consists of a small modern painted iron gate set in modern rustic brick square piers with concrete caps. Front garden bounded by hedges. Across the rear elevation is a gravelled communal driveway. Beyond rear driveway is a line of basalt rubble outhouses or garages, some with rendering to side walls. Garage for this house is detached: PVC rainwater goods; asphalt roof to one portion and Bangor blue slates to other portion; modern sheeted timber garage doors; modern metal flue pipe.

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 enhancing the building
J. Setting

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 windows and fanlight, but despite this, together with the rest of the houses in the terrace it still forms a group of definite character.