Millcourt Antiques, 99 Lurgan Road, Seapatrick, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 4NE

Millcourt Antiques is a multi-bay two-storey rendered end-terrace shop built around 1865, situated at the junction of Lurgan Road and Seapatrick Road in Seapatrick. It forms part of a terrace of five buildings originally constructed by the local spinning firm Hayes & Co Ltd as housing for supervisory staff and a shop.

The building is L-shaped in plan. It has a pitched natural slate roof with blue and black angled ridge tiles, and a rendered chimneystack with moulded caps and terracotta pots. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods sit on projecting eaves, with uPVC replacements to the rear. The walls are painted roughcast render applied over a smooth rendered plinth.

The street-fronted west elevation displays three windows to the first floor and a plate glass window to the ground floor, flanked by pilaster strips. A distinctive canted entrance bay at the left contains a window to the first floor and, at ground level, a panelled-and-glazed double-leaf timber door with brass latch, surmounted by a square-headed overlight and flanked by lesenes. A timber sign is mounted on the rendered fascia and wraps around the shopfront. The first-floor windows are 1/1 timber sliding sash with projecting sills; some first-floor windows are timber fixed-paned, and uPVC windows appear to the rear. The ground-floor plate glass windows at north and west are replacements.

The north elevation contains three windows to the first floor above a plate glass window to the ground floor, both flanked by lesenes. The left bay has four first-floor windows, with a timber-sheeted door and infilled window at ground level to the right. The east gable features a projecting chimney flue. The rear elevation is abutted by the adjoining building and shows a uPVC window to the first floor facing east, alongside a blocked-up first-floor window facing south; the remainder is not visible.

The buildings first appear in the valuation fieldbook dated 1864 to 1874 and are shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of around 1900 as a terraced row opposite the Hayes mill complex, captioned 'Seapatrick Mills'. The shop, store and yard were initially valued at £25, leased from Frederick William Hayes and Company Limited. Early occupiers included Thomas Wallace and William Hayes of the Seapatrick Spinning Mill, indicating the company's involvement. The shop later passed to Isaac Mathers in 1879, Samuel A Hamilton in 1883, and in 1890 to James Leckey, grocer. By 1904 the Seapatrick Co-operative Company had taken over the shop and stores, which by the 1900s was used for grain and flour storage above a grocery and provisions business. A surviving photograph from this period shows painted words reading 'Grocery & Provision Stores, Seapatrick, Grocery & Hardware Stores' wrapping around the doors and windows, with two six-pane display windows to the ground floor.

The adjoining coal yard building was substantially altered at ground floor level. The c.1900 photograph shows it originally featured a set of double doors painted with the words 'Coal Yard', with a round-arched doorway to the left and a substantial window-door opening to the right. More terraced housing originally abutted the coal yard but has since been demolished.

By the 1930s, at the time of the First General Revaluation (1933–34), the premises was described as a corner shop 'with front in two sides and coal store at back', leased by T & A Wallace from F W Hayes and Company Limited at a yearly rent of £52. The shop continued trading until the late 1960s as a supermarket-style shop. Since 1995 the premises has operated as an antiques shop. The building has undergone cumulative alterations including replacement of the ground-floor shop windows, though it has retained its commercial use and some original character.

The site sits at the junction of Lurgan Road and Seapatrick Road, with a twentieth-century housing estate to the north and west, and a rubble stone wall opposite across the street. The wider context relates to Banbridge's prominence in world linen production during the nineteenth century, following the invention of power-loom spinning and weaving which led to the establishment of great spinning mills such as Hayes at Seapatrick and Dunbar McMaster at Gilford, supplementing numerous existing weaving and bleaching concerns that utilised the Bann's water power.