42 Main Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey gabled terrace house in the N end of Main Street in the village of Kircubbin.

Front SW facade has right of centre timber panelled door with semicircular plain fanlight all encased with simple pilasters and moulding to arch. Modern two pane timber window to right or door, made to resemble sliding sash and case, but with top hung upper opener. Narrow smooth cement surround to window. Similar window to left of door with large elliptical arch coach doorway to far left, with chamfered ‘in and out’ dressings and timber sheeted double doors. Four evenly spaced windows to first floor, as before. [To the left of the coach arch is a window to ground and first floor of No.40. This section of No.40 may have one belonged to No.42 and may have served as an office, with perhaps an entrance in the arch way itself.]

Rear has mixture of modern timber windows, with PVC windows to a full height gabled return.

Front facade finished in lined render and painted, rear and return finished in plain render and unpainted.

Roof pitched with asbestos free slates to front and pan tiles to rear. Five rendered chimney stacks.

Mixture of PVC and cast iron gutters and down spouts.

Former two storey rubble-built gabled out house to rear recently demolished.

Historical information

The present owner of this house (1997) believes that this is one of five original houses in Kircubbin, and that it dates from c.1750. Whilst this cannot be verified as yet, it is clear that by the time of the publication of the first OS map of the area in 1834, this (NE) side of Main Street was more complete than the opposite, suggesting overall greater age. The OS Memoirs state that in the 1830s there were some houses within the town which dates of 1769 inscribed upon them, and a not insubstantial ‘terrace’ of dwellings is indicated on Taylor’s and Skinner’s road map of 1777. Moreover, the owner also believed that the house may have been built by a member of the once locally prominent Herron family and that the Herrons allowed the former outbuildings at the rear of the property (locally known as the ‘granary’) to be used as a mass house during penal times (i.e. prior to c.1770s), thus perhaps indicating a mid eighteenth century date for property as a whole. These buildings may have also housed a small workshop engaged in the manufacture of straw hats and bonnets, an industry for which the town was noted as early as the 1840s. The section to the far right of No.40 (to the left of No.42) appears to have originally belonged to this property and may have served as an office relating to the outbuildings at the rear.

References- Primary sources
1 'Taylors and Skinner’s Maps of the Roads of Ireland' (Dublin 1777).
2 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.]
3 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st Edition, 1834, Co. Down 18.
4 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]
5 PRONI VAL 1B/311A & B 1st valuation, Inishargy, c.1835.
6 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st revision, 1860, Co. Down 18.
7 PRONI 2nd valuation, Inishargy, c.1863.
8 UFTM WAG 1837 W.A. Green Collection- Photograph of Main Street, Kircubbin, c.1910.
9 PRONI D.3302 Heron Family Papers. [These papers are not yet listed and therefore currently not available for public perusal, however they may contain documents relating the buildings within Kircubbin and perhaps even this house.]

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Two storey house, set within a terrace, of possible 18th century origin, which has retained its original front façade arrangement but now has modern windows throughout. The interior layout appears largely intact and some 19th century detailing remains.