Site of former grain store

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Site, to the N of Castle Street (NW of Comber town centre) of a former grain store, built in 1863 and demolished c.1978-79.

The building was described in the first survey of March 1970 as, ‘Six storey building. Slated [gabled] roof, walls of random [sandstone] rubble…condition poorish’. The photograph taken at this time also shows that to its SW façade the store had ten small openings to each of its six floors, mainly windows but with three doorways to the ground floor. Most of the windows were boarded over. The NE façade appears to have had a similar amount of openings. There were doorways to the SE gable, along with a fire escape stair. To the NW gable there was a single storey lean to. There was a brick chimney stack to each gable and some skylights to the SW side of the roof. The building measured roughly 26.5m x 11m in plan.

The building was set alight by vandals in 1978 and demolished shortly afterwards. The site is now occupied by leisure centre playing fields.

Historical information

The former grain store on this site was built between 1860 and 1863 by the local milling firm of John Andrews & Sons. The plans were adapted by William Glenny Andrews from a similar structure erected shortly before this by James Macauley, at the Inver mills in Larne. The building cost £1,750 to complete and, like the Andrews flax spinning mill, the work was carried out without a contractor.

The Andrews’ corn mills in Comber ceased production in 1883. The fate of the building in the years immediately following this is unclear. It appears to have been used [?as a bonded warehouse] by the owners of the Comber distilleries for a time in the early 20th century and US troops were billeted within during W.W.II. Some time after 1945 the building was converted to a piggery and then, in the 1960s, to an indoor poultry farm. The store was abandoned by the mid 1970s and set alight by vandals in August 1978. Shortly after this the building was demolished and the site later used as part of the playing fields of a near by leisure centre.

References- Primary sources
1 Linen Hall Library ‘Slater’s Royal National Commercial Directory of Ireland’ (Manchester 1870).
2 PRONI OS/2/3/10 OS map, 2nd ed. 1901, Down 10.

Secondary sources
1 Sydney Andrews (ed. John Burls), ‘Nine Generations- A History of the Andrews Family, Millers of Comber’ (Isaac Andrews & Sons, 1958), pp.148, 160-161. [Sydney Andrews states that the grain store was built in brick when it was in fact mainly built of sandstone.]
2 E.R.R. Green ‘The Industrial Archaeology of Co. Down’ (Belfast HMSO 1963), pp.43-44.
3 Norman Nevin ‘The Story of Comber’ (c.1980s) [typescript in Comber library].
4 Brian Townsend ‘The Lost Distilleries of Ireland’ (Neil Wilson Publishing Ltd. 1997), pp.73-77.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Site (now leisure centre playing fields), of a large six storey, sandstone built, grain store of 1860-63, demolished in c.1978.