10 Shore Street, Cushendall, Co.Antrim

10 Shore Street is a mid-terrace two-storey three-bay rendered Georgian-style townhouse on the north-west side of Shore Street, Cushendall, County Antrim. Built before 1859 and most likely around 1830, it is one of a row of similar houses that front directly onto the pavement and line the north-west side of the street.

The building is rectangular on plan, with its principal elevation facing south-east. The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles and three smooth rendered chimney stacks topped with circular terracotta pots. Ogee-profile cast iron guttering is supported on a moulded cornice and terminates to a circular cast iron downpipe positioned right of centre on the front elevation.

The principal elevation is finished in pebble dash render with banded plaster quoins to each end. All window openings are square-headed, set on masonry sills with smooth plaster surrounds. Notably, the ground-floor bays are not aligned with the windows on the floor above, giving the facade a distinctive and somewhat quirky character. At ground level there are coupled 6-over-6 exposed box timber sliding sash windows, a square-headed door opening slightly to the right — recessed, with a replacement painted timber door fitted with two glazed vision panels and two solid panels below, opening onto a threshold one concrete step up from pavement level — and a square-headed coach arch to the left side now fitted with a replacement modern roller shutter door. Above, three 6-over-6 exposed box timber sliding sash windows are divided by smooth plaster bands and a continuous smooth plaster sill course. Despite the roller shutter and the squared-off opening to the former coach arch (the original rounded opening survives to the rear), the exterior retains significant historic character. An original window on the exposed gable, visible from a distance across the lower roofs of adjacent properties, adds further to this character; this is a small square-headed opening at attic level fitted with an exposed box 1-over-1 timber sliding sash. The Georgian glazed sash windows throughout are of particular note.

The south-west side abuts the neighbouring No. 8 Shore Street. The north-east elevation abuts No. 12 Shore Street, with the gable projecting above No. 12's roofline in pebble dash render. To the rear, the north-west elevation is also finished in pebble dash render, with artificial slate to the rear roof slope, replacement timber top-hung windows, a flush timber back door with a single glazed panel, PVC rainwater goods, and thin concrete window cills. There is a two-storey mono-pitch return to the left side and a single-storey lean-to outhouse to the rear of the return, both roofed in artificial slate. The former coach arch on the right side, now with a modern metal garage door to the street, has exposed rubblestone walling to the left side of the archway; the opposite wall of the archway contains a deeply recessed modern flush door leading to the adjacent No. 8 Shore Street.

The majority of the buildings along Shore Street were erected in the first half of the 19th century by the Turnly family. Francis Turnly, Cushendall's proprietor, had travelled to China in 1796, where he accumulated a fortune of around £75,000. In 1801 he used this money to purchase the Newtownglens estate from the Richardson family for £24,000 and subsequently renamed the settlement Cushendall. Described by the architectural historian C. E. B. Brett as an eccentric character who "effected extraordinary improvements in buildings and roads on his property," Turnly transformed what had been little more than a scattering of cabins, a mill, and a bridge into a coastal resort, taking advantage of growing tourist traffic passing through on the way to the Giant's Causeway. Hotels such as the Glens of Antrim on Shore Street and numerous commercial properties were erected during this period.

A row of buildings along the northern half of Shore Street was depicted on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832, and No. 10 is likely to date from this early phase of development. The buildings may have featured in the Townland Valuations of 1834, though the loss of the accompanying town plan makes it impossible to identify individual properties with certainty. No. 10 is first recorded with certainty in Griffith's Valuation of 1859, which set its total rateable value at £8. At that time the property was leased by the Turnly estate to an Alice Black, who remained at the address until the 1870s. By around 1876 the Annual Revisions record it as occupied by William John Stevenson, a local grocer. Stevenson was still at the address at the time of the 1911 Census, which described the building as a first-class dwelling of eight rooms, with rear outbuildings including two cow houses, a piggery, a fowl house, a turf house, and a store.

Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the property was noted as leased by the Turnly estate to a Mr Archibald Dowling, and the rateable value was confirmed at £8. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the rateable value had risen to £18. In 1967 the building was purchased outright by Daniel McAlister, a local auctioneer, who leased it to other tenants. In 1972, the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society described the north side of Shore Street as "a miscellany of two and three-storey houses, stuccoed, rendered and pebble dashed." The buildings along Shore Street were included in the Cushendall Conservation Area in 1975 — only the second conservation area to have been designated in Northern Ireland, a distinction described as "testimony itself to the special qualities of the village." In the same year Cushendall was chosen as one of Northern Ireland's four pilot schemes for conservation during European Architectural Heritage Year. No. 10 Shore Street makes a special contribution to this conservation area and sits authentically within the historic town centre.