125 Main Street, Bushmills, Co. Antrim, BT57 8QB

125 Main Street, Bushmills, is a two-storey, two-bay, painted rough-cast rendered former mid-terrace house, now functioning as a café, built around 1834. The name of the architect is unknown. It stands on the west side of Main Street, aligned parallel to the Bush River, due south of Market Square, within the Bushmills Conservation Area. Although originally part of a terrace, the building is now effectively end-of-terrace following the demolition of the neighbouring property at 121–123 Main Street to the north-west.

The building has a rectangular plan-form beneath a duo-pitched roof of artificial slate with black clay ridge tiles. The rendered chimney stack, which is left unpainted, has a corbelled cap and four clay pots. To the rear south-west slope there are modern roof-lights and a dormer. The walls are finished in painted rough-cast render to both the front and rear elevations, and the building sits on a painted rendered plinth. The north-west side elevation, exposed following the demolition of the neighbouring property, shows uncoursed stone construction.

The principal elevation faces north-east onto Main Street, where the ground floor is occupied by a replacement timber shop-front installed around 1999. This consists of a solid timber-framed glazed entrance door with a fixed transom light, flanked by paired windows to each side on masonry sills, with the whole shop-front flanked by timber moulded pilasters. A painted timber signboard runs the full length of the fascia above and reads "THE VILLAGE BISTRO." The two bays on the first floor contain uPVC top-hung casement windows on painted masonry sills. The dominant signage has an adverse effect on the overall character of the building, and the uPVC windows also detract from it. Rainwater goods to the front elevation consist of moulded uPVC guttering discharging to a circular painted cast-iron downpipe.

To the rear south-west elevation, which is enclosed by a high uncoursed rubble-stone wall of basalt, the walling where visible is of white painted render. There is a pedimented wall-head dormer window to the left side and two small modern roof-lights to the rear slope. A stained timber eaves board supports uPVC rainwater goods to the rear. Windows to the rear are uPVC. A single-storey gabled return spans almost the full width of the rear of the building. The south-east side is adjoined to the neighbouring property at 127 Main Street.

The building's interior has been substantially modernised and retains very little of historic interest.

125 Main Street was constructed as part of the broader early 19th-century rebuilding of Bushmills, which was extensively redeveloped from the 1820s onwards by the MacNaghten family of Bushmills House, who had acquired the estate in 1787. The building first appeared on the Townland Valuation Town Plan of around 1834 as a simple terraced structure. It was absent from the Townland Valuations of 1835, suggesting it was either unfinished at that time or fell below the £3 minimum rateable value required for inclusion.

By 1859, Griffith's Valuation recorded the property at a value of £4 and 15 shillings, initially leased by John Hill, a local national schoolmaster, to a Mr John Taylor. Occupancy changed frequently over the following decades, and by the turn of the 20th century the premises were occupied by James Simpson, a local saddle maker who operated a saddler's shop there. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1902 depicted the building in its current layout, with a small outbuilding to the rear, and the 1911 Census of Ireland described it as a second-class dwelling of six rooms with a stable as its sole out-office.

The Simpson family remained at the address until around 1935, by which time the property was valued at £6 and 15 shillings and was being leased by the Dinsmore family, occupants of the public house at 135–137 Main Street. Around 1952, the building was purchased outright by a Mr Alexander Laverty, who also resided at the adjoining 127 Main Street. Laverty converted the former private dwelling and shop into commercial premises with extensive stores to the rear, raising its rateable value to £24. The Laverty family continued to hold the shop and stores until at least the end of the Second General Revaluation of 1956–72, at which point the total rateable value stood at £32.

In 1972, the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society's guide to North Antrim described the buildings along Main Street in general terms as forming "a well-scaled street," noting that "many good doorways and shopfronts remain, although there is the usual profusion of signs," and that while no individual building apart from the former Courthouse was worthy of separate mention, "the unity of the street frontages must be maintained." 125 Main Street was listed in 1980 and was subsequently included in the Bushmills Conservation Area, designated in 1992 to preserve the built heritage of a village that holds the highest concentration of listed buildings in the north-east of Northern Ireland. Around 1993 the building was converted from use as an art gallery into its current use as a café, and the present shop-front was added around 1999. The building was delisted on 2 June 2017, having been assessed as being of insufficient architectural and historic interest to be considered special.