Downshire Arms Hotel, 95 Newry Street, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 3EF

Downshire Arms Hotel, 95 Newry Street, Banbridge

The Downshire Arms Hotel is a symmetrical two-storey, five-bay Georgian coaching inn with outbuildings, built around 1815 and considered the best surviving example of its type in Ulster. It stands prominently at the junction of Newry Street and Commercial Road in Banbridge town centre, on the west side of Newry Street.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The building is thought to represent a remodelling of an earlier inn on the same site. Among the papers of the Downshire estate is an estimate dated 1804 by Robert Sharland of Hillsborough for repairing and rebuilding the old inn, and elevations by Charles McBlain and Charles Lilley dating from 1810 also survive in those papers. However, the surviving drawings do not correspond to the present building, which therefore remains unattributed. The first hotel in Banbridge is said to have been built in 1768 on the site now occupied by the Town Hall. For some years a "Bunch of Grapes" sign hung over the entrance to the Downshire Arms, recovered from that earlier hotel when it was demolished in 1833 or 1834 to make way for the Town Hall.

The early growth of Banbridge dates from the middle of the 18th century, when Lord Hillsborough encouraged building in the town by granting plots at nominal rents in perpetuity, to which were added "town parks" — small farms in the immediate neighbourhood. The Downshire Arms was built as a posting inn where mail-coaches stopped to change horses and allow travellers to rest and refresh themselves on the route between Belfast, Newry and Dublin. A post-horn would signal the time to depart on the next stage of the journey. The inn also served as a central marketplace for linen trading in the early 19th century. A traveller in Ireland in 1824, James Glassford, noted that cottars and labourers wove webs on hand looms in their homes and brought them to market at Banbridge, where they were sold at inns to bleaching merchants who then distributed or exported them. On a typical market day, more than 300 pieces of "green linen" were sold at the Downshire Arms.

For almost two centuries the hotel was central to the social and commercial life of Banbridge. From the introduction of gas lighting in 1852 to the opening of railway lines in 1859 and 1863, to the unveiling of memorial tablets on the Downshire Bridge in 1892, participants customarily gathered at the Downshire Arms to celebrate. The hotel hosted numerous auction sales of land and houses, cattle shows from 1877 onwards, and even a travelling dentist who fitted artificial teeth on several occasions in 1890. High-ranking army officers stayed there during their movements between Belfast and the Curragh, as did County Court judges and Lord and Lady Arthur Hill, who were popular and frequent guests.

The hotel appears, uncaptioned, on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, shown then on the outskirts of Banbridge with a rectangular plan, two projecting wings, a large enclosed stable yard to the rear, and gardens to the south. Its plan form and stableyard remained largely unchanged through subsequent map editions. The hotel is not captioned until the fourth edition of 1903–18, where it is mistakenly labelled "Devonshire Arms Hotel."

The Townland Valuation of 1828–40 gives dimensions for the inn, offices and yard, which together were valued at £46. The outbuildings at that time included cellars, a turf house and stables, and the proprietor was initially Mrs Margaret Boyle. The inn was taken over by Alexander and Robert Rule in the 1830s. By the time of Griffith's Valuation (1856–64), the proprietor was James Young, who had taken over from a former landlord named Mr Leech. Young leased the building from the Marquess of Downshire together with slightly over two acres of land. A "hotel farm" of some 30 acres is also mentioned in the valuation record. The buildings, which included "two large rooms for dinner parties," were valued at £70 and the two-acre plot at £5. The outbuildings recorded at that time included cellars, a harness room, six stables, a barn loft, piggery, poultry house, coach house and loose boxes.

In 1863 and 1864 James Young was mentioned several times in the Belfast Newsletter as the host of the Downshire Arms, noted for serving dinners "in excellent style" which "reflected great credit on the establishment." In 1871 a billiard room and a further coach house were added, raising the valuation to £75. However, fortunes turned: in 1886 the billiard room was deleted from the hotel description and the valuation was reduced to £70, then to £60 in 1889. By 1894 a valuer noted there was "not much business at present" and that the owner had complained of the valuation, though the valuer judged it moderate given that it had already been reduced some years earlier. James Young died on 28 December 1894 and the hotel passed to his unmarried daughter, Sarah Beardmore Young. A dinner "admirably served by Miss Young" was provided to a Farming Society meeting in 1898. However, Sarah Young suffered from ill health and eventually advertised the hotel for sale in the Belfast Newsletter in 1900. The property offered for sale comprised commercial and private sitting and dining rooms, bedrooms and a billiard room, together with extensive outbuildings described as "all two-storey high," including stabling for forty-four horses and a byre for ten cows, over an acre of well-planted garden and paddocks, and a thirty-six-acre farm immediately adjoining the town. The rent at that time was £116 per year, inclusive of the licence, goodwill and bar fittings.

The hotel was purchased by Hugh L. Chambers, a veterinary surgeon. The 1901 census records Hugh Lemon Chambers, aged 34, as head of the family, and his wife Aida G. Chambers, aged 25, as proprietress. The couple had two young children and a resident staff of five: a housemaid, cook, waiter, groom and ploughman. The building was designated first class and had sixteen rooms, with nineteen outbuildings. In 1905 Chambers complained of the valuation, and the resulting valuer's notes provide a full plan and dimensions of the hotel and outbuildings, showing single- and two-storey buildings surrounding the rear courtyard, the majority in rubble masonry and slate, with later additions to the south wing in brick and timber. It was at this period that a traveller remarked that an imaginative mind could easily re-people the hotel "with the travellers by stage-coaches, Irish Mr Pickwicks, Sam Wellers and Tony Wellers."

The Chambers family remained at the hotel until at least 1957. The 1911 census records Hugh and his wife as parents of six children between three and eleven years old, with domestic staff comprising a housemaid, two general servants and a driver. Hugh Lemon Chambers died on 13 July 1930; the hotel passed to his wife and then to his eldest son, James Glenholme Chambers, in 1941. A younger son, also named Hugh Lemon Chambers, took over in 1943. One of Mrs Chambers' daughters was a doctor who used the lower right-hand apartment as a surgery.

In the First General Revaluation of 1933–34 the hotel was revalued at £58 and £8 for agricultural buildings. The hotel accommodation at that time comprised six bedrooms, a bathroom and four reception rooms; the family residence to the rear had four bedrooms, a room, kitchen, pantry, scullery, larder and wash house. The valuer described it as "an old fashioned commercial and residential hotel now doing very little business. Has not been modernised and is in very poor condition throughout." The son of the proprietress was farming land in the vicinity and using the outbuildings as farm offices. Though licensed, the licence was not in use, with no bar and no stock of liquors kept on the premises. Only the ground floor and one bedroom had electric light, and the exterior was judged "unattractive." In 1942 part of the outbuildings were converted into a flat occupied by a veterinary surgeon named V. A. Drake at a rent of £1 per week, comprising two rooms, a bathroom and a small surgery, valued at £8 10s.

The building was listed in 1976. By the 1980s it was owned by Mr Barry Heslip and his wife Amy, the third generation of his family to run the hotel. Renovations were being carried out, and it was noted that the hotel was one of few remaining hostelries to boast a hanging sign, that two of the three original fireplaces were still in use, and that the roof and windows had been restored to their former pattern. In the closing years of the 20th century the hotel underwent a major extension and refurbishment programme costing £1.365 million. The designers, Manor Architects of Moneymore, added a new wing to the hotel, almost doubling the frontage, and a further extension to the rear, leaving the stable courtyard largely intact.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The hotel has a rectangular plan with an in antis portico set between projecting end bays, and a two-storey return to the rear. A large modern extension to the south has roughly doubled the original floor plan, and there is also a flat-roofed extension to the west, both of no architectural interest. The hipped roof is covered in natural slate with leaded hips and blue-black angled ridge tiles. The rendered chimneystacks carry tall clay pots. Cast-iron ogee-profile rainwater goods are fixed to the projecting eaves. The external walls are finished in ruled-and-lined painted render. Windows throughout are six-over-six timber-framed sliding sashes with painted projecting sills, except where noted otherwise.

The principal elevation faces east. Its central bay is recessed with three openings to each floor and a full-width portico carried on fluted columns. The entrance at ground-floor centre consists of a modern double-leaf timber-panelled door flanked by five-pane sidelights and surmounted by an elliptical-headed timber spider-web fanlight. The left and right wings are hipped, each with an elliptical-headed arched recess at ground-floor level containing a window; the window in the right bay is tripartite, comprising a six-over-six central light with two-over-two sidelights. The south elevation is fully abutted by the modern extension. The west, or rear, elevation is partially abutted at its centre by the flat-roofed modern extension; the right bay is abutted by the two-storey return, which is itself abutted to the west by a modern single-storey annexe of no interest. The north gable has two windows at first-floor level.

STABLE YARD AND OUTBUILDINGS

To the rear of the hotel is a large stable yard, now in use as a car park, accessed from Commercial Road through rubble stone square gate piers with modern metal gates. A modern parking area also lies to the south of the outbuildings. The yard is enclosed by a variety of well-preserved rubble stone slated outbuildings with red-brick dressings, all having timber casement windows with glazing bars and timber-sheeted doors. A two-storey barn to the west has a hipped roof and a segmental-headed carriage-arch opening with timber-sheeted doors. A two-storey hipped barn to the north has external steps. Together these outbuildings form a fine and relatively well-preserved example of an early 19th-century stable yard. Although the original interior of the hotel has lost some detail, the exterior retains most of its architectural detailing largely intact, and the near-complete stable yard adds significantly to the historic interest of the site.