133 Main Street, Bushmills, Co. Antrim, BT57 8QE

No. 133 Main Street is a two-storey, two-bay painted rendered end-of-terrace house, built between 1834 and 1857 on the west side of Main Street in Bushmills, County Antrim. The architect is unknown. The building sits within the Bushmills Conservation Area, in the townland of Magheraboy or Bushmills, and was delisted on 2 June 2017.

The building has a rectangular plan form with a pitched roof covered in fibre cement slates. The chimney stack to the south-east gable has been rebuilt and carries two terracotta clay pots; the brick chimney stack to the north-west side also has circular terracotta clay pots. The north-west wall is adjoined to the neighbouring property at No. 131 Main Street.

The principal elevation faces north-east and is accessed directly from the paved footpath on Main Street. It is three bays wide at ground floor level and two bays wide at first floor, with the end bays aligned between floors. The walls have a smooth ruled-and-lined rendered finish, painted throughout, and are set on a painted rendered plinth. Raised corner quoins to the left side of the front elevation are painted in a contrasting colour. The entrance doorway is not centred on the elevation and contains a timber panelled door with small glazed panes to the upper section. All windows are top-hung casements on painted timber sills. uPVC rainwater goods are used throughout.

The south-east gable end is blank. Its walling is of unpainted ruled-and-lined smooth render, apparently recently redone, topped by a large rendered chimney stack with two terracotta clay pots.

The south-west rear elevation faces onto an open shared courtyard. The walls are lime-washed render for the most part, with wall splays at ground floor to the right side. A uPVC door, off-centred at ground floor and not aligned with the first-floor bays, is accompanied by a top-hung casement window to its right. To the left is a small single-storey painted rendered outshot with a lean-to corrugated roof and a timber-framed glazed door. At first floor, two top-hung casement windows align with the outer bays below. Projecting brick headers at eaves level support a uPVC gutter. A small metal-framed boiler enclosure with a metal flue extending above eaves height abuts the lean-to.

The setting includes a lime-washed stone gabled outbuilding to the west of the shared yard, which appears to be disused. This outbuilding has a blind brick-arched window to its north gable above the adjoining neighbouring outbuilding, which is smaller in scale. A further mono-pitched outhouse is adjoined to its east, with vertical boarding above timber double doors opening onto the yard. The Oak House (a separately listed building) sits to the left of No. 133, separated from it by a narrow alleyway providing access to the shared yard. No. 131 Main Street adjoins to the right.

Although the original form, proportions and modest scale survive at the front and side, and the white-washed stone outhouse to the yard also survives, the exterior retains little original detailing. The roof, rainwater goods, windows and back door have all been replaced with materials considered inappropriate, detracting from the building's character. Internally, the ground floor plan form has been altered and little historic fabric survives. The cumulative effect of these changes was judged to mean the building held insufficient architectural and historic interest to remain listed.

The site has a layered history. The Townland Valuation Town Plan of around 1834 depicted an earlier building on the site, but the Townland Valuation of 1835 recorded it as a dilapidated single-storey structure. The same valuation noted that a single-storey rectangular Methodist chapel stood in the yard to the rear, though this had been demolished by the mid-19th century. The present building was constructed before 1857, when it first appeared on the second edition Ordnance Survey map, and was recorded in Griffith's Valuation of 1859 with a value of £4, initially occupied by a Mr. John Jameson, who leased the site from John Hill, a local national schoolmaster.

The building's occupants changed frequently over subsequent decades. By the turn of the 20th century it was occupied by Daniel McKenzie, a local farm labourer. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1902 depicted the house in its current layout without any outbuildings to the rear. The 1911 Census of Ireland described it as a second-class building consisting of five rooms, with a piggery as its sole outbuilding. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the rateable value rose to £5 and 10 shillings, and the house was leased by the Dinsmore family — occupants of the adjoining public house at Nos. 135–137 Main Street — to a Mr. Daniel Carson. In 1959 the property was purchased outright by John Kerr, a retired labourer, who died in 1962 and left the house to his son Martin, a local bus driver. Martin Kerr continued to live there at least until the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), at which point the total rateable value stood at £3 and 10 shillings.

The building was listed in 1980 and subsequently included in the Bushmills Conservation Area, designated in 1992 to preserve the built heritage of a village that possesses the highest number of listed buildings in the north-east of Northern Ireland. The Bushmills Conservation Area Guide records that, while Bushmills was already a significant settlement before the end of the 18th century, from the 1820s the village was extensively rebuilt by the MacNaghten family of Bushmills House, who had acquired the estate in 1787. 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 "while no building apart from the former Courthouse is worthy of individual mention, the unity of the street frontages must be maintained." Records held by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency note that No. 133 underwent a renovation in the 1980s that included the re-slating of its roof, and that around 2003 one of the original chimney stacks was reconstructed in concrete.