69 Church Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A five-bay, three-storey gabled house. Main entrance faces south.

South elevation: roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses; walling of random built rubble with white painted raised sandstone quoins to extremities and block surrounds to windows, with keystones. Windows are modern rectangular timber 3-light, horizontally divided, of fixed lights with a top-hung middle light. Ground floor contains full width projecting modern shop front insertions and central porch. Original main entrance contained within outer porch. Side and rear elevations are rendered with roughcast; contain original rectangular timber sashed windows.

SETTING: The building stands facing directly onto the main street of the town.

Historical information

Precise date of building not recorded; but a building appears on the site on the OS map of 1832. It may be supposed to be of late 18th or early 19th century date, although its large and uniform windows suggests a mid-19th century or later date. Originally the manse for the Unitarian Church; later the newspaper office of the ‘Antrim Guardian’.
It stands in the area of a monument, SMR no. ANT 173.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1832, Co Antrim 50 (building shown on site but date indeterminate).
2. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 50.

Secondary Sources
1. UAHS, Antrim and Ballymena (Belfast, 1969), p 9.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is a building of probably later 18th to early 19th century date which has undergone a number of alterations which have detracted from its original character.