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

30 Church Square, Rathfriland

A two-storey house with attic storey, occupying the south end of the east side of Church Square at its junction with Caddell's Lane. The building is recorded as a substantial property of architectural interest, though not formally graded.

The front elevation faces Church Square and presents three bays beneath a pitched artificial slate roof with overhanging boxed eaves and plain barges. Cement-rendered walls with painted smooth base course are surmounted by coped cement rendered chimneys to each gable. Two modern Velux lights pierce the front roof pitch and one the rear pitch.

A single-storey porch projects from the middle bay, its walls dashed to match the main block with a chamfered base course. Decorative painted stucco pilasters at the corners support a moulded entablature with plain blocking course around a flat roof. The porch front contains a modern top-hung timber window with painted granite cill and a door with semicircular fanlight to its left cheek. The right cheek has a window with semicircular head. All windows throughout the house are identical modern 1/1 top-hung timber type unless otherwise stated, each with painted granite cill.

The left and right bays of the main block each contain a large window to ground and first floors. The middle opening on the first floor comprises a pair of modern French windows with plain rectangular transom, leading onto the porch roof. The left gable is blank and dashed. The right gable is dashed as the main façade, with a single window to each floor at right. Small windows at attic level to left and right have heads that slope in line with the barge boards.

The rear elevation is abutted to the left by a two-storey rear return. The remaining exposed rear wall is smooth cement rendered with a large modern stained timber window to ground and first floors. The return roof is pitched, its right pitch raised almost flat and felted, its left pitch in natural slate.

The rear return exists in two stages. The right stage, forming part of the house proper, has large modern stained timber windows to each floor and a stained timber kitchen door to its right cheek with a modern window above. The left stage continues as a long outbuilding advancing from the rear elevation and enclosing a southern yard. This stage has a pitched natural slate roof with a single red brick chimney between house and outbuilding. Its right cheek is smooth cement rendered with a door and a wide opening to a garage door facing Caddell's Lane. The first floor has three modern timber top-hung casement windows of varying sizes unevenly spaced. A large two-storey open-ended shed abuts most of this left stage, its timber partitioning constructed partly from window shutters removed from the house.

The left elevation of the rear return faces south onto Caddell's Lane. Smooth cement rendered throughout except for a single dashed bay at the left end, which contains modern stained timber windows to each floor. The remainder of this elevation features an imposing granite-dressed coachway to its centre. This consists of a vehicular entrance flanked by pedestrian doors, all possessing V-jointed ashlar quoins over chamfered plinths, raised imposts and radial voussoirs framing semi-elliptical heads. The vehicle entrance is fitted with sheeted metal doors and retains an original radial timber tympanum. The pedestrian doors are sheeted timber with similar heads and decorated with four horizontal bands of metal studs; the left pedestrian door has a pair of conical stones set at plinth level. Above the coachway entrance, just below eaves level, is a narrow rectangular recessed panel in smooth cement render with granite cill. To left and right at first floor are single infilled granite openings with granite cills.

Later alterations include a modern up-and-over garage door at ground floor to the left of the coachway and a large metal door at the extreme right; above the latter are two modern fixed windows without cills.

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

The building exhibits mixed construction, with rubble stone exposed at ground floor left of the end gable of the rear return, which is rendered and partially abutted by an adjoining building.