32-32A Castle Street

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Small two storey shop (with flat to first floor), set in the terrace on the S side of Castle Street (close to Comber town centre), much altered in recent years.

The front (N) façade has a doorway (to the upstairs flat- No.32A) to the left on the ground floor with modern panelled and glazed door. This doorway originally had a stone surround. To the left of this is a large modern shop front (No.32) with internally illuminated PVC sign over. To the first floor are two (original) window openings, now with PVC frames. The front façade is finished in Tyrolean render and painted. Eaves course.

To the ground floor of the rear the façade is completely covered by a single storey flat roofed extension which in turn is now almost completely covered by a long single storey, shed-like extension with a mono-pitched corrugated iron roof. All of these extensions look relatively modern. To the first floor a modern, partly glazed, door has been inserted to the left (which opens on to the flat roof of the extension), and to the right there is a window with a PVC frame. The upper half of the rear façade is finished in plain render and painted.

The gabled roof is covered in natural slate. PVC rw goods.

Historical information

This site is shown occupied on the 1722 map of Comber and all other available maps thereafter. The valuation records of 1834 state that this section of the street (then known as Mill Street) contained ‘six houses exempt’ (i.e. below rateable value). It is possible that this building was one of the six houses, and could date from the late 18th or early 19th centuries.

The property has still a dwelling house when surveyed in December 1975, with Georgian paned sash windows and a stone surround to the doorway. The ground floor has been converted to a shop in recent years with a flat to the first floor.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI D.654/M1B/2 Londonderry Papers- ‘Survey of the town, tenements and parks of Comber…1722’.
2 PRONI D.654/M54/4, 6, 7, 12, 15, 24, 28-32, 34 Londonderry Papers- Maps of Mill Street 1793-1828. [Castle Street was also known as Mill Street in the 18th and early 19th centuries.]
3 PRONI VAL 1B/316A p.49 1st valuation, Comber, 1834. [The valuation records of Castle/Mill Street and High Street, Comber, are very difficult to decipher. The original details of the buildings, in terms of dimensions, age/condition grading etc., dates from 1834. In 1838 (after the rateable threshold had been raised from £3 to £5), a revaluation was carried out in Comber. This entailed the making of various annotations to the original record book, the (apparent) discarding of the original valuation map and the drawing up of new one to tie in the 1838 findings. Unfortunately, the 1838 annotations do not provide dimensions or age/condition grading of the buildings and the new map has a different numbering system to that used in 1834. As a result it is extremely difficult to tell what properties the more detailed 1834 records actually refer to, making, in many cases, the correlation of buildings as they stand today with those of 1834, at best difficult and at worst impossible. The writers have tried to make as much sense of the records they can.]
4 PRONI OS/1/3/10 OS map, 1st ed. 1834, Down 10.
5 PRONI OS/6/3/10/3 OS map, 1st rev. 1858, Down 10.
6 PRONI 2nd valuation, Comber, 1861. [In print in PRONI search room and in the Linen Hall Library- the town plan to accompany this valuation is missing making identification of owners of properties largely impossible.]
7 PRONI OS/2/3/10 OS map, 2nd ed. 1901, Down 10.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Small two storey terrace shop (with upstairs flat), originally a house of probable pre 1834 origin, but radically altered and modernised in recent years.