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

2 Ferry Street is a much altered two and a half storey terrace shop with apartments, positioned at the top of the slope at the north end of Ferry Street next to a rock outcrop. The building may be partly pre-1834 in origin, but successive twentieth-century renovations have given it a sharp, almost newly-built appearance that has significantly detracted from its character.

The front western façade is asymmetrical. To the right of centre is a large house door, now leading into the middle of the shop, with a timber panel and glazed door, leaded fanlight and sidelights all set in a recess with a bracketed cornice over. To the left is a large timber four-pane window looking into the shop. Further left is a timber panel door with two steps leading to a narrow laneway that provides access to the rear. A recent traditional-style timber shop front is positioned to the left of the house door, featuring a recessed timber panel and glazed door, panelled stall riser, four-light window, painted shop sign and cornice on decorative brackets. The first floor has seven windows with modern frames. A recently added traditional projecting shop sign is located between the sixth and seventh windows. The front façade is finished with Tyrolean render. The pitched roof is covered with fibre cement slate and has three gabled half-dormers with segmental arch window openings and frames similar to those on the first floor but slightly smaller. Cast iron gutters and downspouts are present with a gutter course between the first floor windows and half-dormers. Two recent concrete brick chimney stacks with uniform pots are visible. The rear features a flat-roofed extension with various timber windows, flat-roofed dormers and a Velux window to the main roof, with an outside staircase to the attic floor.

A building is shown on this site on Patrick O'Hare's map of 1799, in the possession of William Phillips. The valuation map of circa 1835–38 records two two-storey properties on the site, apparently owned by Eliza Gowan and James Ringland junior. One of the buildings incorporated the town post office at this stage. Valuation records of 1861 also indicate two properties, then in the hands of James Ringland and Charlotte Jobling, though the post office had relocated to new premises elsewhere in Ferry Street by this time or prior to 1846. Around 1900, both formerly separate properties were amalgamated and the attic floor with the half-dormers was added according to the present owner. In the mid-twentieth century a Mrs. Baxter ran a temperance hotel in the house. Between the mid-1970s and 1991, the building underwent continuing alterations, particularly at ground floor level, with one room converted firstly to a garage and then to an antique shop, which currently occupies almost the entire ground level. Part of the recent flat-roofed extension to the rear is now used as a clock repair shop.