42 Upper English Street, Armagh, County Armagh, BT61 7BA

42 Upper English Street is a three-storey, two-bay former townhouse of late 18th-century origin, attached on both sides and converted to commercial and office use. It stands prominently on Upper English Street in Armagh city centre, where it terminates the vista looking south along College Street within the Armagh Conservation Area. The building follows an irregular, skewed plan form, with a shop occupying the ground floor.

The roof is covered in fibre cement slates and is drained by replacement gutters and cast-iron downpipes supported on cavetto stone eaves. The chimneystack is replacement redbrick and is shared with the adjoining building. The front elevation is finished in roughcast cement render over painted smooth render at ground floor level. The south-east gable is roughcast throughout. The rear elevation shows a variety of materials across its floors: exposed Flemish-bonded brick to the upper floor, random sandstone rubble to the first floor, and recently applied cement-based roughcast render to the ground floor.

The windows are of mixed character. Those to the upper floors of the front elevation are generally replacement 1-over-1 horned sashes with painted masonry cills. The gable retains original multi-paned timber sashes without horns, set within smooth rendered architraves. Windows to the rear are mostly replacement plain sashes with concrete cills; one original 6-over-6 sash survives here, with an exposed box, no horns or cill, and rubble sandstone voussoirs above.

The principal elevation faces north-east. At ground floor, the entrance door is set to the left within a deep panelled timber reveal inside a tooled stone surround with long-and-short quoins and a keystoned head, all painted. The door itself is original, six-panelled, accessed by two sandstone steps, and fitted with a hinged kickboard, brass knob and bronze knocker. To the right of the door at ground level is a round-headed recess that formerly housed a boot-scraper, now removed. Two further rectangular recesses sit at the base of the panelled linings and may also have accommodated boot-scrapers originally. The remainder of the ground floor has been converted to retail use, with a modern multi-paned timber display window, a flush fascia beneath an additional projecting timber fascia, a roller-shuttered shop door, and a steel grille to the shop window. The upper-floor windows are vertically aligned, with three windows to each floor and those to the left slightly offset.

The south-east gable has a sash window at second-floor and attic level, centrally placed. Ghost marks on the gable record the former presence of a lower gabled abutment to the right. The gable is also met by a classically styled rusticated ashlar stone arch with a balustraded parapet, which leads through to the rear yard. At the rear, a timber-sheeted cantilevered toilet extension, accessed from the second half-landing and rising to just below eaves level, abuts the rear elevation. The ground floor rear has been recently rendered, with a timber-sheeted panel inset with a glazed central section beneath the toilet extension; its abutments have recently been removed. The first and second floors each have a window set to the left side. The west gable is abutted by the similarly proportioned adjoining building.

The building first appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of around 1834–35. Its precise construction date is unrecorded, but surviving joinery and the entrance door are consistent with a late 18th-century date, with renovation work carried out in the early 20th century. The 1834 town plan shows the building as L-shaped on plan, with two outbuildings and a yard to the rear. The first valuation records of around 1834 record the occupier as a Dr Meredith Armstrong, with the building valued at £17. By Griffith's Valuation of around 1862, the value had risen to £25; the occupier at that time was a James Armstrong, and the property was noted as a "Medical Shop", with the addition of commercial premises to the ground floor and improvements to the rear outbuildings likely accounting for the increase. The occupier changed to a Dr Henry Frazer in 1871, and then to a chemist, Andrew McBride, in 1892. McBride operated the ground floor shop and lived in the house with his wife and two children, as recorded in the 1901 Census. By the annual revaluations of around 1902, the value had risen significantly to £41. A valuer's note of around 1907 records that the premises had been renovated, that the rear had been burnt down and rebuilt, and that the former L-plan yard had been "covered over". The full extent of this renovation and rebuilding work is not clearly established. Historic photographs confirm that the shopfront fascia and windows were not added until the early 20th century; prior to this, the ground floor retained two windows of similar proportions to those above. More recently, the former stable at the south-western end has been removed and the rear abutments remodelled or demolished. The rear yard is now tarmacked and enclosed by recently rendered boundary walls following the removal of the outbuildings. The ground floor rear has been re-rendered, and original windows here may have been obscured.

The building's architectural and historic interest has been adversely affected by the addition of a 20th-century shopfront, dry dash render, fibre cement slates, and the demolition of its rear outbuildings. It sits in a prominent urban setting on Upper English Street, opposite the junction with College Street. The immediate surroundings include a listed 19th-century terrace to the west and the fine Italianate former bank — now St Patrick's Trian visitor centre — immediately to the east, to which this building is joined by an arch.