The Tower House, 34 Quay Street, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 5ED

An attached three-storey three-bay seventeenth-century former customs house with attached tower, located on the west side of Quay Street, Bangor, now in use as a Tourist Information Centre and office. The house is rectangular on plan with crenellated four-stage tower projecting forward slightly at north-west corner. Roof is pitched natural slate with angled clay ridge tiles and a simple rubble stone chimneystack at left gable. Half-round cast-iron rainwater goods over corbelled eaves. Walling is generally random rubble stone bedded in lime mortar, with the exception of the west elevation of the house, which is painted roughcast with smooth rendered base course (slight batter to left side). Windows to house are 1/1 replacement horned sashes, generally with painted stone sills; those to tower are fixed lights. Windows to exposed rubble stone elevations and tower have sandstone rubble jambs and lintels, occasionally dressed; to rear are several cast-concrete replacement cills and lintels. Windows to rendered elevation have plain reveals. Doors are timber sheeted throughout. Principal elevation faces west and has three equally-spaced openings to each floor, with the exception of the ground floor which has two openings to left of the central door. The door has a plain transom over and is accessed by a disabled access ramp. The left gable is crow-stepped and is blank with evidence of a blocked opening at ground floor centre. It is abutted by the tower at right, and there is a further smaller tower (probably a former stair tower) to re-entrant angle, rising from a corbelled sandstone base at first floor level, carried on a relieving arch which spans the angle. Tower openings are irregular and there is a door accessed by two sandstone steps to south projecting side of tower. The rear elevation has three openings to each floor, with an escape door to central bay at each floor. That to second floor has recent sandstone jambs and lintel, and is accessed by a metal fire escape. The right gable is abutted at an angle by an adjoining four-storey building. Setting The building is street fronted, prominently located at the junction of Quay Street and Victoria Road. There is a car park to rear, accessed by electronic gates and bounded by other buildings on all sides. Roof: Natural slate Walling: Stone / roughcast Windows: Timber RWG: Cast-iron