Former Town Hall, 24 High Street, Donaghadee, Co Down

Former Town Hall, 24 High Street, Donaghadee

The former town hall is a large three-storey gabled Georgian house of the later eighteenth century, situated prominently in the centre of High Street. The building is constructed from rubble, with rendered facades to parts of the structure.

The front facade is symmetrically arranged. At ground floor level, the centrepiece is a magnificent doorway featuring sandstone Ionic half-columns or pilasters set on sturdy block plinths, supporting an unadorned entablature and pediment. The door itself is panelled, framed with v-jointed (rusticated) sandstone dressings, voussoirs and a keystone. This entrance is now in poor condition, with badly worn and broken column capitals and damaged sections of dressing. To either side of the doorway are two windows with sliding sash frames and Georgian panes, each encased with plain pilasters, entablature and a shallow pediment block; two similar windows are positioned to the right of the entrance. The surrounds to the ground and first-floor windows were added around 1900. The first floor has five slightly smaller windows with similar sash frames but plain surrounds with segmental arch heads and keystones. The second floor has much squatter sash windows with Georgian panes. The front facade is finished in lined cement render, left unpainted. The render to the ground floor is noticeably lighter in tone than the upper floors. Only the very top portion of the north-west gable is exposed; it is blank and rendered. A two-storey shop is attached to the rest of this gable. The south-east gable is similarly blank and rendered.

The rear elevation features a full-height hipped-roof stairwell projection positioned slightly right of centre, with windows on each floor of varying sizes. To the right of this projection are two similar windows to the first and second floors of the main building. On the ground floor to the right is a small flat-roofed boiler house projection, also attached to the north-east face of the ground floor of the stairwell projection. To the right of the boiler house, on the ground floor of the main building, is a window much as those described, with a small six-pane window set at an intermediate level above, which appears to have been inserted in fairly recent times. The stairwell projection and the right-hand side of the rear elevation are unrendered, revealing rubble construction. Partly attached to the far right of the rear and the rear of No. 22 High Street is a long row of one-and-a-half-storey outbuildings, mainly rubble-built. The left side of the rear has two very small six-pane windows set at high level to the first floor, with two larger windows to the second floor. At far left, ground-floor level, is a small extension with a mono-pitched roof, also attached to a high rubble wall to the south-east that encloses a large yard behind the main building. The left side beyond the stairwell projection is finished in lined render, upon which is visible the outline of a gabled building that appears to have been demolished in the 1960s.

The main roof is gabled with rendered parapets and two rendered gable chimney stacks. The front facade has an eaves course with corbels. All roofs are slated with Bangor blue slates.