15 Main Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Large two storey gabled formal house set back from the Main Street on the north side of the village of Kircubbin.

Front E elevation has central timber panelled double door enclosed by two Tuscan columns and a lintel with radial elliptical arch fanlight above. Door, fanlight, columns etc. all set within semi-circular arch architrave with simple pilasters and moulding to arch. Two sliding sash and case windows to left of doorway, with horizontal and vertical astragals, and simple surrounds. Two windows to right as before. Five evenly spaced windows to first floor, same as ground floor (but with slightly different surrounds), except for third centre window which is tripartite. All first floor windows are set on cill course with two curved brackets below each window. Front facade finished in lined render with chamfered quoins and painted.

N gable finished in lined render and blank.

S gable finished in lined render and blank, with single storey garage attached.

Rear has central two level gabled return with various modern timber windows of different sizes and many panes, with a plain timber sheeted door to S side of return. To the left side of the return, on main house, is a tripartite window (as front) to ground and first floor with one to ground floor of right side, with a single sliding sash and case window to first floor. Ground floor window to left of return covered in metal grill.

Roof pitched with Bangor blue slates with asbestos slates to pitched roof of return, Stone parapets to main roof with cement render parapets to return. Four rendered chimney stacks to main house with three cast iron skylights to rear of roof. Cast iron gutters and down spouts.

House surrounded by rendered wall with large trees in front garden.

Historical information

In the original survey of this building in 1970 it was stated that this house (the Presbyterian Manse) appears on the OS map of 1834. This conclusion was erroneous, however, as the building shown on this site on the map in question is ‘L’ shaped and marked ‘Market Ho.’ This was the market house which the OS Memoirs noted had been built ‘about the year 1795 at the expense of the Right Honourable Robert Ward’ and which was ‘so much out of repair’ that it was ‘expected to fall’. According to an article on the history of Kircubbin Presbyterian Church written in 1936 by Rev. C.H. Hunter, the site of the Market House was bought by Rev. James Rowan in 1860, and the manse erected in the same year. Rowan also acquired land [?to the rear of the property] in 1872 which he added to the manse grounds. The building was substantially renovated c.1915, and the return was added c.1920.

References- Primary sources
1 Pigot & Co.s “City of Dublin and Hibernian Provincial Directory” (Manchester 1824), pp. 417-18. [Description of the town of Kircubbin etc. in c.1824. See also Slater’s “Directory” for 1846, 1856 and 1870, original copies of which are currently held at the Linenhall Library, Belfast.]
2 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st Edition, 1834, Co. Down 18.
3 Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), p. 84-5. [c.1834]
4 PRONI VAL 1B/311A & B 1st valuation, Inishargy, c.1835.
5 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st revision, 1860, Co. Down 18.
6 PRONI 2nd valuation, Inishargy, c.1863.

Secondary sources
1. Rev. C.H. Hunter ‘Kircubbin Presbyterian Church’ in 'Journal of the Upper Ards Historical Society No.14' (1990), pp. 26-31. [Article originally written in 1936.]

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A two storey Victorian manse house of 1860 with a somewhat ‘Georgian’ appearance. This building is been generally intact externally and has largely retained its original layout and many simple original features.