Former goods yard office

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A small single storey building of basalt rubble with red brick dressings, originally built as the office to a former railway station goods yard. Entrance faces south west.

Roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses. One chimney, of red brick. Road front elevation has a triplet of semi-circular arched windows; projecting stone cill. Windows 3-pane fixed lights, now missing glass. Shaped timber bargeboards oversailing on shaped timber brackets. Rectangular doorway in side gable, brick dressed, containing iron plated door.

Side elevation of return, toward yard, has a wall of red brick containing a triplet of round arched windows, and a rectangular window. End gable of return overgrown by bushes.

SETTING: The building stands on the corner of the road within the built-up area of the town in the corner of a yard bordering the railway line. Yard formerly contained a number of railway yard buildings, now replaced by a modern warehouse.

Original main yard building described in the first survey in 1971 as "A rectangular building constructed of coursed random blackstone rubble with brick dressings and hipped slated roof."

Historical information

Built 1848 as the office for the goods yard of the Belfast and Ballymena Railway Company, to the designs of the company engineer Charles Lanyon; later owned by the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway; goods yard closed in 1970s. Originally associated with the office in the goods yard was a weighbridge, a goods store, a two-storey stabling block, and a station master's house, all now demolished.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 50.
Secondary Sources
1. UAHS, Antrim and Ballymena (Belfast, 1969), p 12.
2. W.A. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland (HMSO, Belfast, 1980), p 167
3. IHR 7204:1 and 1339:183.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is a mid-19th century building which has undergone some inappropriate alterations and has fallen into a partially derelict condition.