Warehouse, 37a Union Street, Coleraine, Co Londonderry, BT52 1QB

Warehouse at 37a Union Street, Coleraine

A relatively large single-storey brick-built fuel depot and shops, possibly constructed around 1910, with a Belfast Truss roof. The building is set within a large yard on the south side of Union Street, north of Coleraine town centre.

The building is rectangular in plan, measuring approximately 22 metres by 12 metres. The façade is partly brick and partly rendered. The long east elevation features two very large vehicle doorways with roller shutters positioned to the left and centre. A relatively large window sits to the far left, with another window to the right of the second vehicle entrance. To the far right of the elevation is a large area, presumably a shop front, covered by a roller shutter. Immediately to the right of this is a smaller shop doorway, also covered by a roller shutter. The far left end of the elevation is in painted render, with the remainder in brick. Large signboards are interspersed along the length of the elevation. At the south end, the building abuts a larger structure.

The north (gabled) elevation backs onto the yards of terrace houses and could not be inspected. The long west elevation backs onto a smaller building and is only partly exposed. The visible section is in brick, now largely painted, and has some high-level window openings that are currently boarded up. The curved roof is covered in felt.

The building is much altered. Additional structures within the yard include a very long building on the south side, now converted to apartments, with a curved roof that could indicate the presence of Belfast Trusses, and a slightly shorter warehouse building on the east side, also with a curved roof potentially suggesting Belfast Trusses, though neither could be confirmed internally.

The Belfast truss, developed in the mid-nineteenth century, was designed to meet demand for efficient, lightweight and long-span roofs created by the industrial revolution. The first known reference to a curved wooden felted roof structure supported by bowstring girders appears in an 1866 advertisement in the Dublin Builder by Belfast felt-makers McTear & Co., who continued manufacturing trusses until ceasing business in 1908. Anderson & Co., another Belfast felt supplier, began producing trusses to a slightly different design in 1886, launching their Mark II version in 1896, promoted as maximising long spans whilst maintaining lightweight properties. This model was subsequently adopted by other companies and became the standard form historically referred to as the Belfast truss, a term now widely applied to all timber bowstring trusses where internal bracing members meet on the top curved member rather than on the bottom, as was conventional practice.