Garage buildings ('Quinn's of Portaferry')

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Large single storey Belfast Truss roofed garage / car showroom, built c.1920s as a bus depot, but now somewhat modernised with large modern glazed showroom front. To the rear is a smaller Belfast Truss roof building which also appears to have belonged to the depot. The structures are set on the southeast side of High Street, Portaferry.

The main building measures roughly 30m x 18m. The front (NW) elevation is largely taken up with a large modern car showroom window and large flat arch vehicle entrance, with the remainder of the elevation plain rendered. The NE elevation is finished in roughcast with a large vehicle entrance with sliding door to left and a relatively recent small single storey gabled building abutting the elevation to right. The SW elevation is plain rendered with a single high-level window. The rear elevation is in rubble stone with brick dressings to some blocked up window openings. There is a small single storey breeze block built extension to far left and a much larger single storey flat roofed extension to right. The curved roof is felt-covered and has two central ‘gabled’ roof light projections.

To the SE corner of the open yard behind this building there is a smaller structure (roughly 18m x 8m) with a Belfast Truss roof, now largely disused. This is largely plain rendered with two large vehicle doorways to the NW elevation and a large lean-to section to the SE. The curved roof is covered in corrugated metal with two ‘gabled’ roof lights now partly covered in corrugated metal also.

Historical information

Both buildings originally belonged to a bus depot and appear to date from the 1920s.

The Belfast truss was developed in the mid-nineteenth century to meet the demand for efficient, lightweight and long span roofs brought about by the industrial revolution. A detailed description of the historical development of the Belfast truss is included in the record for HB18/08/139. In brief, the first known reference to a curved wooden felted roof structure supported by bowstring girders is in an advertisement in the Dublin Builder for 1866 by the Belfast firm of felt-makers, McTear & Co. McTear’s continued making trusses until they went out of business in 1908.

A second Belfast felt supplier, Anderson & Co., began to produce trusses, to a slightly different design, in 1886. In 1896, Anderson’s launched their Mk II version; promoted as maximising long spans whilst maintaining light weight. This model was subsequently used by other companies, and is referred to by historians as the Belfast truss, although this term is widely used to apply to all timber bowstring trusses where the internal bracing members meet not on the bottom of the truss as was the convention but on the top curved member.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Large single storey Belfast Truss roofed garage / car showroom, built c.1920s as a bus depot, but now somewhat modernised with large modern glazed showroom front. To the rear is a smaller Belfast Truss roof building which also appears to have belonged to the depot. The larger building is one of the increasingly few large span Belfast Truss-roofed buildings still in use, however it is much altered both internally and externally.

General comments

Surveyed as part of the Belfast Roof Truss survey.