14 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 right, with an original gabled dormer to left. 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 left-hand extremity, common with adjoining house to left: red brick with projecting brick cornice; four pots.
Wall of coursed hammer-dressed basalt rubble with flush pointing crudely applied. Tooled arris to quoins at right-hand extremity. Projecting red brick eaves course. Cast iron guttering but no downpipe.

Front elevation contains one window to the left 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, painted white, with translucent glazing, set below a similarly glazed rectangular fanlight, all in a timber surround; modern aluminium letterbox.

End gable contains two windows, one to ground floor and one to attic, similar to window on front elevation, but lower cill is of unpainted concrete.
Walling similar to entrance front, except pointing is of modern reticulated, or ribbon type, of more recent date to attic portion. Tooled arrises to quoins at each extremity. Oversailing eaves to roof, with sheeted soffits and decorative timber barge boards of similar pattern as previous.

Rear elevation comprises a blank single storey rear wall to the left with a lower projecting rear return to the right, with the main roof sweeping down over it; roof slated as to front elevation.
Rear wall and walls of return are of roughly coursed basalt rubble with original lime mortar in places, but also some later lime mortar repointing and some cement pointing. Projecting brick eaves course to rear wall; projecting smooth cement rendered eaves course to return. Cast iron gutters with cast iron downpipes; PVC soil pipe to rear wall, and PVC waste pipes to return. Tooled arrises to quoins at left-hand extremity of rear wall, but quoins to left-hand extremity of return are not tooled at the corner.
TV aerial mounted on rear wall.
Doorway in side wall of return contains a modern rectangular timber panelled and glazed door of modern design, set in a broad raised cement rendered surround which obscures most of the original brick block dressings.
Window in rear return is modern rectangular timber, fixed lights with top-hung vents, set in smooth cement rendered reveals, with thin projecting concrete cill; some of the original brick block dressings remain but mostly missing where window widened to left; concrete blockwork used to fill part of wall below cill.
Recessed area between rear wall and return is concrete.

SETTING: The house stands at the extreme right-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 concrete paved path to the front pedestrian gateway and also along the front of the house. Gateway consists of a small modern painted iron gate set in steel posts. Front garden bounded by hedges. Rough gravelled driveway along end gable from street giving access to the communal rear driveway. Rear driveway gravelled, bounded partly by the basalt rubble and red brick gable end of an adjacent building and partly by a basalt rubble wall with rough basalt copings. Mounted on adjacent gable is an old flat iron gate to close off the driveway from the street. Beyond rear driveway is a line of basalt rubble outhouses or garages, some with rendering to side walls. The outbuilding for this house is detached: metal rainwater goods; Bangor blue slates; small sheeted timber door; smooth cement render to one door jamb; 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
F. Structural System
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 gable and 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.