5 Parade Ground, Randalstown, Antrim, Co Antrim, BT41 3AA

5 Parade Ground is a two-storey, two-bay house forming part of a terrace of seven houses in Randalstown. The building has architectural and historic character and occupies an important setting beside the river Main, near a listed bridge and viaduct.

The terrace likely represents a mid-to-late 19th-century remodelling of an earlier militia barracks. The original barracks was built in 1816 by Lord O'Neill, Colonel of the Antrim Regiment, at a cost of £2,000 to accommodate the staff of the regiment when it was disembodied. The 1830s description noted that the original front range facing the river consisted of four contiguous two-storey houses, 130 feet long and 20 feet deep. The present terrace of seven houses with projecting porches is shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1903, while plain rectangular blocks appear on earlier maps of 1829 and 1858, suggesting remodelling occurred in the mid-to-late 19th century. The parade ground formerly in front of the barracks, described in the 1830s as "a very handsome parade ground 36 yards broad extending 184 yards along the edge of the river," later became the town mall or public promenade; it was shortened by the building of a railway viaduct in the mid-1850s.

The main entrance is located in a projecting porch on the east elevation. The east elevation comprises a two-storey main block with two windows, one to each floor, to the left of the projecting single-storey gabled porch. The main block roof is of Bangor blue slates in regular courses, with one chimney to the left-hand extremity, common with the adjoining property. The chimney is smooth rendered with a plain projecting block cornice and three modern pots. The wall is smooth rendered with a projecting eaves course or frieze, all white painted, with black painted reveals to openings. A metal gutter with cast iron downpipe runs around the eaves. Windows are rectangular timber white painted sliding sash, 2 over 4, with horns, set in exposed sash boxes painted white, with projecting stone cills painted black. The porch has a roof slated as the main block but with overhanging eaves with feet of rafters exposed. Decorative timber bargeboards to the gable are ornamented with scrolling fretwork. The porch has a cast iron gutter and downpipe. The walls are rendered as the main block but with raised quoins to the outer corners of the porch, painted black. The front wall of the porch contains a window, one of a pair with the adjoining house: a rectangular timber sliding sash, 1 over 2 with horns, in a partly recessed frame, painted as previously described, with a projecting stone cill. The side wall of the porch, facing north, contains the main entrance: a rectangular timber panelled door set in plain reveals with a concrete step.

The rear elevation is two-storey with a roof as the front elevation. The wall is rendered as the front with a cast iron gutter and PVC soil pipe. Two windows to the first floor consist of one to the right, a timber sash as on the front of the main block, and one to the left, a timber sash as on the front porch and one of a pair of coupled windows with the adjoining property, with projecting concrete cills. The ground floor has two windows, one to each side of a doorway. The window to the left is sashed as on the entrance front of the main block; the window to the right is sashed as on the front porch, with a projecting stone cill. The doorway contains a rectangular timber sheeted door.

The building stands within the built-up area of the town, located in a terrace of seven houses that faces the river but is set well back from it with extensive hardstanding in front, surfaced partly in tarmac. The front boundary to the hardstanding is formed by a low rendered retaining wall to the riverbank, with a large metal pipe across it on concrete supports, viewed through a screen of mature trees. The front open area is bounded to the north by a basalt retaining wall surmounted by original iron railings, retaining the end of the elevated main street. To the south, a tall railway viaduct, now defunct, built of snecked basalt rubble, bounds the area. At the rear is an open yard or compound common to all houses in the terrace, mainly of hard surfacing. Slated single-storey basalt rubble garages or sheds form the west boundary to the rear area. Immediately outside the rear elevation of this house is a small concrete yard, partly covered overhead by an extension of the roof of a tall basalt rubble outbuilding linked only by its roof to the main terrace.

The house lay vacant for more than five years and was derelict by 1992, when it was then repaired.