38 Downpatrick Street, Rathfriland, Newry, Co Down, BT34 5DQ

38 Downpatrick Street, Rathfriland

This is a two-storey, two-bay urban vernacular building set in a terrace on the east side of Downpatrick Street. The left bay contains the dwelling and the right bay the shop. It dates to the 1880s and was originally built as a licensed house and spirit grocer, continuing as a public house until the 1950s.

The building has a pitched natural slate roof with rendered chimneys to each gable. The left chimney has three pots and the right has one. Rendered brick skews line each gable, and a metal half-round gutter with downpipe runs on the right gable. The walls are lined with cement render at ground floor level and wet dashed render above. The base course is stepped as it descends the hill, with each bay stepped in turn. Stepped V-channelled quoins are interrupted by a broad rendered fascia running between ground and first floors.

Windows throughout are 2/2 vertically divided sliding sashes with horns, fitted with rendered cills and granite cills unless otherwise stated. The left bay (dwelling) has a window to the left at ground floor and a painted timber door to the right with four raised and fielded bolection moulded panels, black iron Victorian door furniture, and a plain glazed transom light. A small name plaque is mounted on the wall to the left of the door. The door is approached by a shared granite step. The right bay (shop) has a pair of painted tongue-and-groove storm doors to the left of the entrance, sharing a plain glazed transom, and a large fixed rectangular landscape window without cill to the right.

The left gable is completely abutted by the party wall of the adjacent property. At the rear, the left bay is abutted by a two-storey return with a lower roofline. The exposed section of this wall is wet cement dashed, with a glazed and timber sheeted door to the ground floor and a 2/2 sash window to the first floor. The return has a pitched natural slate roof, a brick chimney on the end gable, and half-rounded metal gutters with brick walls. The left cheek of the return is smooth cement rendered, with a tongue-and-groove door and 2/2 sash window to the ground floor and a rendered blank gable above. A small single-storey annex with corrugated metal roof and partly cement rendered brick walls is abutted to the ground floor left; it has a 1/1 top-hung timber window. A small single-storey cement rendered toilet block sits at the junction between the return and main house. The right gable is only partly rendered, with a 2/2 sash window to the left and a painted tongue-and-groove sheeted door to the right at ground floor. Two sash windows occupy the first floor: a 2/2 sash to the left and a margin paned sash with etched upper pane to the right, neither with cills. The right gable of the main block is smooth cement rendered.

The building is a plain and little-altered representative of a common building type now largely vanished from the townscape.