30 Church Square, Rathfriland, Newry, Co Down, BT34 5PT

30 Church Square, Rathfriland, is a two-storey house with attic, positioned at the south end of the east side of Church Square facing the junction with Caddell's Lane. The building has been substantially altered both internally and externally, retaining few features of architectural or historic significance, with the exception of the coachway.

The house is of three bays with a pitched artificial slate roof featuring overhanging boxed eaves and plain barges. Coped cement-rendered chimneys sit to each gable. Two modern Velux lights occupy the front pitch and one the rear pitch. The walls are wet-dashed with a painted smooth base course. A single-storey porch projects from the middle bay of the front elevation, its walls dashed to match the main block with a chamfered base course. The porch corners are embellished with painted stucco pilasters supporting a moulded entablature with plain blocking course around a flat roof. The porch front contains a modern 1/1 top-hung timber window with painted granite cill. Its left cheek holds a modern door with semicircular fanlight, while its right cheek has a window with semicircular head. The left and right bays of the main block each contain large windows to both floors. The middle opening on the first floor has a pair of modern French windows with plain rectangular transom leading onto the porch roof. All other windows to the house are identical 1/1 top-hung timber windows unless otherwise stated. The left gable is blank and dashed. The right gable is dashed as the façade with single windows to ground and first floor at right, and small windows at attic level whose heads slope in line with the barge boards.

A two-storey rear return abuts the rear elevation to the left. The remaining rear wall is smooth cement-rendered with large modern stained timber windows to ground and first floors. The return roof is pitched, with its right pitch raised almost flat and felted, while the left pitch uses natural slate. The return exists in two stages: the right stage, forming part of the house, contains large modern stained timber windows to each floor with a stained timber door to the kitchen on its right cheek and a modern window above; the left stage continues as a long outbuilding enclosing the yard to the south. This outbuilding stage has a pitched natural slate roof with a single red brick chimney between the house section and outbuilding. Its right cheek is smooth cement-rendered with a door and wide opening to a garage door on Caddell's Lane. The first floor has three modern timber 1/1 top-hung casement windows unevenly spaced and of varying sizes. Much of this stage is abutted by a large two-storey shed, open-ended to the yard, its timber partitioning constructed from the original window shutters removed from the house.

The left elevation of the return faces south onto Caddell's Lane and is smooth cement-rendered except for a single bay at the left end, which is dashed as the house, containing modern stained timber windows to each floor. The remainder of this elevation features an imposing granite-dressed coachway at centre, consisting of a vehicular entrance and flanking pedestrian doors. All three openings have V-jointed ashlar quoins over chamfered plinths, raised imposts, and radial voussoirs framing their semi-elliptical heads. The vehicular entrance is fitted with sheeted metal doors and an original radial timber tympanum. The pedestrian doors are sheeted timber with similar heads and are decorated with four horizontal bands of metal studs; the left pedestrian door has a pair of conical stones set at plinth level. Below eaves level, immediately above this entrance, is a narrow rectangular smooth cement-rendered recessed panel with granite cill. At first floor to left and right of the entrance are single infilled granite openings with granite cills. Later openings include a modern up-and-over garage door to the left at ground floor and a large metal door at extreme right with two 2/2 modern fixed windows above without cills. The end gable of the rear return is rendered and partially abutted by an adjoining building, with rubble stone construction exposed at ground floor left.

The small front garden is enclosed with vertical iron railings with foliated spearheads and applied decoration on a dwarfed granite wall. Two matching gates hung from highly decorative iron posts, one on either side of the porch, with railings curving at the corner of Caddell's Lane.

Historical records show the building does not appear on the 1776 Meade Estate map but first appears on the 1834 Valuation map. In 1835, the premises were noted as occupied by Andrew McClenaghan, who as a magistrate was responsible for running and maintaining the market house and court. The house was erected in 1860 by the McClenehans, who were then owners of the town gas works, measuring 41 feet by 28 feet 6 inches by 22 feet 6 inches plus return, consistent with circa 1862 Valuation statistics and current dimensions. The outbuildings fronting Caddell's Lane first appear on the 1860 town map, complete with coach and pedestrian entrances. The 1834 map shows a terrace of 12 houses at this location, all exempted from valuation, suggesting they were likely single-storey and thatched structures. The current occupant, resident since the late 1970s, oversaw substantial modernisation work, including replacement of all ground floor ceilings except that to the hall, and removal of original linings, architraves, and shutters from the windows; the shutters have been repurposed as partitions in the outbuilding.