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

12 Ferry Street, Portaferry

This is the right-hand house in a pair of small, informal two-storey houses of probable pre-1834 construction, sited on the eastern side of sloping Ferry Street. The building is currently undergoing major renovation.

The front façade features a timber-sheeted door with a fanlight containing simple tracery to the right, and to the left a large window opening now boarded up. On the first floor are two windows: a double sliding sash window to the left and a single sliding sash window with one vertical astragal to the right. The façade is finished in lined render and painted, with an exposed section of the south gable rendered. The building has a gabled roof covered with fibre cement slates, a blue brick chimney with simple corbelling and matching pots in the centre, and a rendered chimney stack between. Cast iron gutters and downspouts are present, with an eaves course.

To the rear, the house extends with two single-storey returns with mono-pitched roofs, which join to a two-storey outbuilding further to the east. These enclose a small yard. The rear façade of the main house shows two first-floor windows, the one to the right being a six-pane fixed light frame. This façade is covered in whitewashed rough cast, though some has worn away to reveal rubble construction beneath. The returns and outbuilding have mainly sash windows.

Historical records show that a building stood on this combined site (with No. 10) as early as 1799, when it was recorded on Patrick O'Hare's map in possession of Hugh Donning. The valuation of circa 1835 recorded two two-storey houses here, then owned by John McMullan and John Edwards, which may be substantially the buildings visible today. By the circa 1861 valuation, the properties were occupied by Anne Hogan and Margaret McCombe.