4 Ferry Street, Portaferry, Co Down, BT22 1PB

4 Ferry Street is the left-hand house of an informal pair of two-storey houses of probable pre-1834 origin, located on the sloping east side of Ferry Street just south of Portaferry town square. The building now has little architectural character.

The front elevation faces west. On the ground floor, to the right is a timber-sheeted and glazed entrance door, with a large window featuring a modern frame to its left, and another timber-sheeted and glazed door to the far left leading to a rear passageway and garden. Stone cills are present throughout. The first floor has two windows with modern frames; the left-hand window is smaller than that on the right. The front façade is finished in lined render and painted.

To the rear is a large single-storey flat-roofed extension with modern windows. The rear elevation has two first-floor windows and a further window at a slightly lower level serving a stairwell, with unpainted roughcast finish.

The gabled roof is covered with modern composite slates and features a single small gabled dormer with a sash window surrounded by fluted pilaster details, decorative brackets, bargeboards and finials, with slates to the dormer sides. Two Velux windows are set into the rear slope. A blue engineering brick chimney with simple corbelling and matching pots is constructed lengthways, with its longer sides facing front and rear. Cast iron gutters and downspouts complete the external features.

A lease of this site, stipulating the construction of buildings, was granted to James McMullan in 1776. Around 1835, the portion now comprising numbers 4 and 6 was occupied by two two-storey houses, possibly those constructed by McMullan, then held by Elizabeth McDowell and Nathaniel McCarter. By 1846, number 4 was in the hands of Charles Press and housed the local Post Office, serving in that capacity until sometime between the early 1870s and around 1890. The building remains in residential use.