55 Main Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Large two storey gabled terrace of shops and dwelling set in the middle of the SW side of Main Street, Kircubbin.

No.55 is a shop front with a central timber and glazed door with plain fanlight flanked by two large fixed light shop windows and plain stall risers, with door and windows each encased with panelled timber pilasters with brackets, which ‘support’ a PVC internally illuminated shop sign with cornice above.

First floor of entire terrace has nine unevenly spaced sliding sash and case windows, with horizontal and vertical astragals and simple moulded ‘arch’ surrounds. These windows are set on a cill course with two small brackets beneath each opening.

Entire front facade and gables finished in lined render with chamfered quoins, eaves course and plinth to front.

Rear of entire terrace has been extended somewhat, with a modern single storey lean to extension to Nos.55-59. Modern window frames to rear of most of terrace.

Roof pitched with four unevenly spaced chimney stacks, one at each gable, with two close together to right of centre. Stone parapets. Cast iron gutters and down spouts. Large rubble built outbuildings to rear.

Historical information

The OS map of 1834 shows buildings on this site, which do not correspond exactly with the terrace we see today. This, coupled with the uneven arrangement of windows and chimney stacks, may suggest that this terrace was not built as one complete block but may have been added to on at least one occasion, with the decoration to the window and door openings added to give a semblance, or illusion, of a ‘formally’ planned building. The decoration itself, like that to the manse further up Main Street, seems to indicate a mid to later nineteenth century date (?c.1870s-80s), but without an investigation of the fabric of this terrace, it is difficult to tell.
In recent times No.55 housed the Northern Bank, whilst No.59 appears to have been converted to shop premises some time after 1970 and previously had a panelled double door with fanlight and moulded surround, with a sliding sash and case window.

The occupant of No.59 informed the writers that his section of the terrace was formerly a Post Office c.1750, however, given that little existed in the village prior to the 1770s, and that Kircubbin probably only became a post town after 1800, this hardly seems likely.

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.
7 UFTM WAG 1835, 1837 W.A. Green Collection- Photographs of Main Street, Kircubbin, c.1910.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Long two storey terrace block of possible early nineteenth century origin, probably extended and remodelled c.1870-80s. The front facade has an irregular arrangement though the (late Victorian/Edwardian) rendered finish is uniform. The ground floor contains two shops with varying shop fronts, one bland and modern, the other still retaining a largely tradition appearance. Between the shops is the lower level of an apartment, which also appears to take up the entire first floor. This apartment still retains its sash windows but its interior (and that of the shops) is modern. The rear has some 20th century extensions.