8, 8A and 8B High Street, Portaferry, Co Down, BT22 1LQ

A terrace of houses and warehouses of possible late 18th century construction, situated on the north-west side of High Street, to the north-east of Portaferry town centre, with the front elevation facing south-east. The block forms part of a continuous terrace and has group value with its neighbours. The listing now covers No. 8 and its attached warehouse only; No. 6 was originally included but has since been removed from the listing.

No. 8 High Street is a relatively large former house with a long rendered front façade incorporating limestone chips and a plain render plinth. The original entrance to the house — now serving as the entrance to the larger of two ground-floor shops — consists of an eight-panel timber door set within fluted pilasters with Ionic capitals, beneath a blank semicircular fanlight with a panelled arch surround. To the left of this doorway is a large tripartite sash window, now partly covered by a grille and with a fan fitted into one of the panes. To the right is a similar tripartite sash window whose upper half has been boarded over. Further to the right is a plain doorway, undoubtedly a relatively recent insertion, giving access to a first-floor apartment. Beyond this is a large shop window with fixed light, originally likely to have matched the tripartite windows to the left, but now altered in shape. A second recently inserted doorway to the right serves the smaller shop. At first-floor level, three unevenly spaced windows run across this section, matching the arrangement at ground-floor left. Two internally illuminated PVC signs are fixed directly above the former house doorway. No access to the rear of this section was available.

To the far right of the main façade is the warehouse section, which has a broad, timber-sheeted double door at ground-floor level. The upper level was originally similar in arrangement to that of No. 6, but retains windows to the right-hand side only; these are now filled with dilapidated modern three-pane timber frames. To the rear of this section is a very large, three-storey, L-shaped warehouse, now in poor condition and essentially a shell, without floors or roof. The roof of the entire main front section of No. 8 is gabled and covered with Bangor blue slates. Three yellow brick chimney stacks with decorative corbelling rise above the roofline, though some chimney pots are missing. Cast iron gutters and a broken downspout are present.

No. 6 High Street, though no longer part of the listing, forms the immediate south-west neighbour and is described here for context. It comprises two distinct terrace buildings, now amalgamated into one large shop. The building to the left (south-west) is slightly taller than that to the right and has a modern, traditional-style shopfront with a large projecting entablature-like boxed shop sign set on simple stepped brackets, with modern timber shop windows and a timber glazed door beneath. The right-hand building has a similar shopfront but with traditional tripartite simulated sliding sash windows with Georgian panes flanking a slightly recessed glazed panelled door. The first floor of the left-hand building has three tall, three-pane timber windows on stone cills with an eaves course. The upper storey of the right-hand building was originally a warehouse with two levels, each having centrally located doors with windows to either side and a small gable with a pulley directly above. Much of this arrangement survives, with the central doors finished in plain timber sheeting, sash windows with Georgian panes to either side, and a now-defunct pulley wheel at the centre of the small gable. The exposed gables of the south-west section are rendered. To the rear, visible only from a distance, there appears to be a full-height gabled return that may be largely of modern construction, its gable in breeze block, linking to a more overtly modern warehouse extension clad in corrugated iron. Both buildings making up No. 6 have gabled roofs with Bangor blue slates and two rendered chimney stacks with matching pots, with a third yellow brick stack between the right-hand building and No. 8. Velux windows are present to the front and rear of the south-west section, with cast iron gutters and downspout.

Historically, the south-west end of High Street is shown as developed on Patrick O'Hare's map of Portaferry of 1799 and on the Ordnance Survey map of 1834. Valuation records of around 1835 indicate that this section of the terrace was occupied by two-storey dwellings and warehouses of similar height, all probably of late 18th century construction or older. Ownership at that time is difficult to pinpoint precisely, but may have been in the hands of a James McKee. By 1861, the house and the warehouse to the south-west — now part of No. 6 — all belonged to a Hugh Donnan, with a starch works operating within the large outbuildings to the rear. Donnan, or his son of the same name, appears to have retained the property until at least 1870, when he is listed in Slater's Directory as a corn merchant. The south-west portion of the present No. 6 does not appear to be as old as its neighbours and may date from the mid-19th century; significantly, it was not included within Hugh Donnan's holdings of the mid-1800s. When surveyed in 1971, No. 8 appears to have been in use as an office, with the small shop to the right already present. The three-level former warehouse — now forming the north-east portion of No. 6 — appears at that stage to have still been associated with the property, as it had been in the mid-19th century.

Despite the alterations of recent years — which include the conversion of the former dwelling into two shops and an apartment, and the poor condition of the warehouse — the former dwelling at No. 8 retains sufficient architectural and historic interest to merit listing.