36 Main Street, Toomebridge, Co. Antrim, BT41 3TF

A two-bay three-storey terraced house, built around 1790, located at the south end of a row of five houses on the east side of Main Street in Toomebridge. The building now comprises a commercial unit on the ground floor with an apartment conversion above.

The house is rectangular in plan with a two-storey extension to the rear. The roof is pitched with fibre cement slates, cement ridge tiles, and timber eaves board. A painted roughcast chimney rises from the north gable. The walls are painted roughcast with a smooth rendered banded plinth.

The west elevation, which faces Main Street, features a modern shop front at ground floor level consisting of a single leaf hardwood four-panel door with a rectangular fanlight to the right and a window to the left, surmounted by a projecting fascia and signage panel above. Windows in both bays are present at first and second floor levels, with signage fixed perpendicular to the wall between the first floor windows. The replacement timber casement windows have top hung openings, smooth rendered surrounds, and painted precast concrete cills.

The east elevation at ground floor comprises a replacement timber door with an adjoining window to the south side, surmounted by two windows to first floor. The rear elevation has two timber casement windows to the second floor. A two-storey, two-bay extension with a flat roof abuts the building to the south.

The site is bounded to the north by a modern single storey extension to the adjoining building and a two-storey outbuilding with a random rubble wall to the east side. To the south is an enclosed yard accessible from the terrace of buildings numbered 34 to 40. Rainwater goods are uPVC.

The building appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map dated 1833 and by the 1857 map is shown slightly enlarged. According to the Ordnance Survey memoir for the area, in 1836 Toomebridge consisted of 26 buildings, of which two were three-storey—this building being one of them—eleven were two-storey, and the remainder were cottages. The memoir also records that the market house was built in 1786, and the proportions and styles of the block of buildings HB20/01/008A-E suggest they are of similar date, forming part of the historic core of the village situated east of a quay recorded on the 1833 map.

Materials for construction in Toomebridge were locally sourced: stone came from nearby Carn rock, lime from Magherafelt, slates from Ballyronan and Belfast, and timber from Belfast.

The building has been substantially remodelled and extended in recent years, particularly at the rear. The interior has been largely modified with extensive changes to its plan form, and no original details remain. Although the appealing traditional characteristics of the façade survive and serve as a reminder of the early town community, the extensive alterations mean the building no longer meets the statutory and policy tests as a building of special architectural or historic interest.