22-24 Main Street, Rathfriland, Newry, Co Down, BT34 5PS

22-24 Main Street, Rathfriland

A two-storey commercial building of 19th-century date, set in a terrace on the north side of Main Street. The building comprises two bays to the first floor and retains many original features, though later alterations have compromised its overall character.

The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with a terracotta ridge and two cast-iron skylights on the rear pitch. Two cement-rendered corbelled chimneys project from the east gable and between the left two bays. Half-round plastic rainwater goods run along plain timber eaves.

The front elevation is line rendered and painted. The ground floor left bay is occupied by an early 20th-century shop front with a timber and margin-paned glazed door with overlight, recessed and set to the right of centre. The reveal cheeks are glazed. The timber frame is roll moulded with turned bases and caps resting on a rendered stall riser. A plain canted fascia with rendered coping and plainly decorated consoles sits above. The ground floor right bay contains two openings. The left is a doorway with a segmental headed transom and tiled threshold; the four-panelled timber door has a beaded muntin and raised and fielded panels with decorative stop-end chamfering. The right opening is a shallow segmental headed coachway with a pair of tongue-and-groove sheeted doors with decorative chamfering. Above this coachway is a modern internally lit fascia box, now broken. Both ground floor openings have stop-end moulded arrises and pointed and labelled stucco hood moulds, beneath which the render is decoratively incised.

Each first floor bay has two sliding sash windows with decorative horns and painted granite cills with concave ends. The moulded arrises feature stop-end chamfering. A continuous moulded hood mould runs across all first floor windows. The left gable is abutted by a taller building; the exposed right gable is rendered and blank.

The rear elevation is rendered and unpainted. At ground floor, the left side contains the coachway, the centre a modern timber sheeted door opening into an entrance hall, and the right a single eight-over-eight sash window with granite cill. The first floor has two six-over-six sliding sash windows, one above the coachway and one over a single-storey return. Between ground and first floor levels, a round-headed margin-paned single-over-one sliding sash window with blue and red etched glass margins lights the stairwell.

A long, narrow single-storey return extends to the rear with a mono pitched roof sloping from left to right. Its left cheek (facing the yard) features a four-panelled timber door at the left end and two six-over-six sliding sash windows with granite cills to the right. A single-storey brick outhouse with a fixed two-by-three window (of no architectural interest) adjoins the gable. The right cheek forms the yard boundary wall. A linear yard enclosed by rubble stone walls to the north and east and the return to the west lies to the rear.

Valuation records suggest the present building replaced an earlier structure in 1884.