21 The Square

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey terrace house of c.1900, with hipped roof dormers and pilaster mouldings to openings. The property is set within the terrace on the W side of The Square, in Portaferry town centre, and built on a slope rising S to N. Dimensions- 5.5m frontage

The front (E) façade is asymetrical. To the ground floor left there is a panelled timber entrance door with patterned glass fanlight. The doorway is encased with pilasters with stylised leaf capitals and a moulded entablature. Beyond the doorway is a vestibule screen with acid-etched late Victorian/Edwardian floral pattern. To the right of the doorway are a pair of sash windows framed with mouldings as doorway.

To the first floor there is a single window to left and double window to right, with decoration and frames as ground floor. Corbelled eaves course and cast iron ogee gutter. Prominent electricity cabling below eaves course.

The writers did not gain access to the rear.

The front façade is finished in lined render and painted.

The gabled roof is covered in natural slate and has two yellow brick chimney stacks. To the front of the roof are two dormer windows with modern timber frames with moulded plaster surrounds. Natural slate to dormer roofs also.

Historical information

A house or houses is shown on this site on Patrick O’Hare’s map of 1799, in the possession of a William McCleery. Similarly, a building is shown on the OS maps of 1834 and 1859, with an old (grade C+) two storey house recorded on the site in the second valuation of 1863. Photographic evidence (from the Welch Collection), of c.1900, shows this earlier house, a property which may well was dated from the 18th century . The present building, was constructed probably some time around c.1900-1910.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI D.552 Savage/Nugent Papers
2 PRONI and Linen Hall Library ‘Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory’ Vols.1-21, 1852-1900, (Belfast, Henderson [1852-65], Belfast News-Letter [1865- ])
3 Linen Hall Library ‘Slater’s Royal National Commercial Directory of Ireland’ (Manchester 1856), p.592-95
4 PRONI VAL/2B/3/14 Second valuation, 1863
5 PRONI OS/8/23/3 OS town plan of Portaferry, 1900
6 PRONI Laurence Collection: Photograph of The Square, Portaferry c.1900. [Reprinted in Journal of the Upper Ards Historical Society, No.10 (1986), p.24.]
7 PRONI VAL/12E/112/2- Valuation town plan of Portaferry, 1902, with revisions of 1935

Secondary sources
1 G. Philip Bell, C.E.B. Brett, Sir Robert Matthew, 'Ulster Architectural Heritage Survey: Portaferry & Strangford'
(Belfast UAHS 1969)
2 PRONI Portaferry: Sources for Local History (PRONI ?1970s)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Typical two storey terrace house of c.1900-10, with hipped roof dormers and pilaster mouldings to windows.