Post Office, 1 Tirkelly Hill Road, Ballyroney, ***See surveyor's comments***

This is a two-storey, three-bay Victorian dwelling and shop built around 1845, prominently located at the junction of Seafin Road and Tirkelly Hill Road in the village of Ballyroney. The building follows an L-shaped plan form and has retained much of its original simple detailing and character, including the original shop front. Although the shop is no longer in active use, it survives as a good example of its type — once common in the rural environment but now increasingly rare.

The building is covered by a hipped natural slate roof with clay hip and ridge tiles. The chimneystack is smoothly rendered and finished with cavetto mouldings. Plain timber soffits are carried on moulded eaves brackets, and the rainwater goods are ogee-profile aluminium. The external walls are finished in ruled-and-lined painted render over a deep painted plinth, with a two-storey, two-storey rubble masonry outbuilding to the rear laid to courses with brick surrounds.

The windows throughout the house are 2-over-2 timber sliding sash with horns and chamfered surrounds. At ground floor level they are square-headed with projecting masonry cills; at first floor they are segmental-arched with a continuous moulded cill course running between them. The principal entrance door is a timber raised-and-fielded four-panelled door with bolection mouldings and a central divide. It is flanked by margin-paned sidelights with panelled aprons divided by narrow moulded panelled pilasters, and is set within an elliptical-arched opening with chamfered surrounds, a projecting key-block impost, and plinth block. The fanlight above has horizontal glazing bars.

The principal elevation faces east and is asymmetrically arranged. The house itself is set back, with the left bay forming a shop return at ground floor that is two windows deep. The front door is positioned right of centre, with a paired ground floor window to the right. Three first floor windows sit directly above the ground floor openings. The symmetrical ground floor shop front features segmental-arched quadripartite windows flanking a timber sheeted door, above which is a segmental-arched tripartite overlight; paired first floor windows sit above. The right cheek of the projecting shop section has two first floor windows. The left cheek runs flush with the left elevation.

The left elevation is asymmetrically arranged, with two ground and first floor windows grouped slightly left of centre. The rear elevation is also asymmetrically arranged. At its centre, at ground floor level, is a four-panelled timber door opening into a flat-roofed single-storey porch with fixed lights to the cheeks. To the left of this are a full-size window and a diminutive window; to the right are two slightly reduced-in-height windows. At first floor, left of centre, is a rounded-headed timber sliding sash landing light with coloured margin panes, with two further windows to the right. A small single-storey shed abuts the ground floor at the far left, up against the boundary wall. The right elevation is symmetrically arranged with two first floor windows.

The yard to the west is enclosed by a high rendered wall with enlarged squared brick piers capped with pyramidal tops and wrought-iron gates. The outbuilding to the rear is a linear two-storey structure in rubble masonry laid to courses, with brick surrounds to the openings, a pitched slate roof with a wall-headed dormer, timber sheeted doors, and replacement timber fixed lights. The front garden is gravelled and enclosed by railings with masonry piers and coping, accessed through a gate.

Immediately to the front of the building stands a red telephone kiosk, installed between 1935 and approximately 1956 (listed separately). To the south is the church hall associated with the adjacent Ballyroney Presbyterian Church.

The building first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1859, confirming it was constructed between 1833 and 1859. Griffith's Valuation records the property as valued at £5 and used as a dwelling, let by William Ingram to James Bingham, a local merchant who established a general grocery store on the site. James Bingham also operated a separate post office on the Lackan Road, which is now demolished. In 1885, the Annual Revisions record an increase in the property's valuation to £6 following the construction of the two-storey slated outbuilding to the rear.

The 1901 Census records James Bingham (aged 61, Presbyterian) as a Sub-postmaster and Merchant, living at the grocery shop with his wife Susanna (aged 57) and their son James M. Bingham (aged 31), who worked as a general assistant and farmer. The building was then described as a first-class dwelling and grocer's shop consisting of seven rooms. James Bingham died in 1909, leaving the grocery shop and post office businesses to his son. By the 1911 Census, James M. Bingham was living there with his wife Eliza (aged 21) and his widowed mother; the shop was by then described as a second-class shop and dwelling. The outbuilding to the rear housed a number of farm offices including a stable, two cowhouses, a dairy, piggery, boiling house, and two barns.

According to Young, the Binghams were farmers from Lackan townland, and James Bingham's father John had opened the post office on the Lackan Road in 1864. The grocer's shop at the crossroads was open before 1859 and was presumably partly stocked with the family's own farmed produce. James M. Bingham purchased the shop outright and continued to live there through to at least 1929, when the Annual Revisions conclude. The family business continued at the site until the 1950s, when the post office on the Lackan Road closed and the Crothers family took possession of the grocer's shop, converting it into a new post office. From that point, Maureen Crothers served as postmistress for the area.

The building was listed in 1982. In 1997, Royal Mail included the Victorian shop and its telephone kiosk in a commemorative set of four postage stamps, each depicting a post office from one of the four regions of the United Kingdom — the others being Haroldswick in the Shetland Islands, Painswick in Gloucestershire, and Beddgelert in Gwynedd. The Ballyroney post office appeared on the 63 pence stamp for Northern Ireland.