Sharvagh House, 136 Main Street, Bushmills, BT57 8QD

Sharvagh House is a little-changed late Victorian house set back from the main building line on Main Street near the centre of Bushmills, within a mature, mainly grassed site. Built around 1876–1878, it was designed as a doctor's surgery and dispensary for Dr James Macaw, who had leased the plot from Hugh Lecky and begun developing it by 1876. The two-storey dwelling with dispensary was recorded that year as measuring 12 yards by 12½ yards, though the house was only habitable — and hence rateable — by 1878. The site on which it stands is shown as a garden on both the Ordnance Survey map of 1857 and the valuation plan of 1858, at that time belonging to the property immediately to the south, then in the hands of Elizabeth D. Anderson. The listing covers the house, outbuildings, boundary walling, and gates.

The main house is almost square in plan, with a narrow rear return set at forty-five degrees. It is two storeys throughout, with dry-dash rendered walls and projecting painted sandstone quoins to the principal elevations, and smooth rendered walls to the rear sections. Eaves are flush throughout, and the main block has a U-shaped roof with an internal gutter, hipped on three sides, covered in natural slates, with bracketed eaves. Two centrally positioned rendered chimney stacks rise from the roof, each with a simple projecting cornice and clay chimney pots.

The front elevation faces west and is dry-dash rendered. It has a central doorway with a simple projecting smooth rendered surround. The door itself is four-panelled, with the top panels raised and fielded and the bottom panels flush, with plain glazed half-lights and an overlight above. To either side of the doorway are shallow projecting square window bays, matching the door surround in detail, each containing paired 1-over-1 timber sliding sash windows. At first-floor level there are three 1-over-1 timber sliding sash windows with shallow segmental heads and simple moulded architraves.

The south elevation is also dry-dash rendered and has two 6-over-6 timber sliding sash windows at first-floor level, one similar window on the ground floor, and a paired 4-over-4 window. All have a narrow smooth plaster band surround. The north elevation is stepped on plan: the front section is rendered in the same manner as the front elevation and has no openings, while the rear section is smooth rendered and has a small basement-level window and a sliding sash window at first-floor level. The east elevation, which comprises mainly one of the gabled arms of the front block, is smooth rendered and has four irregularly placed windows: a 1-over-1 timber sliding sash at first-floor level, a paired 2-over-2 at ground-floor level, and two nine-paned square basement windows.

The dog-leg return to the rear is also two storeys and steps down from the main block, with a gable end. Between the two arms of the U-plan, the dog-legged return meets the main block in an awkward junction, particularly at roof level. The return elevation facing north-east has five variously proportioned small-paned windows, all original. The gable of the return is smooth rendered and has double twelve-paned windows at first-floor level, set over a small partially rendered and partially corrugated iron-clad extension with a corrugated iron roof. The ground floor of the return has one 8-over-8 timber sliding sash window, and the first floor has a single 1-over-1.

Immediately to the south of the main house are two outbuildings that served as a wash house and possibly also as servants' accommodation. The two-storey block, nearest to Main Street, is rectangular and gabled with a central doorway fitted with a modern steel roller shutter door. It has 2-over-2 timber sliding sash windows to either side, and above each window is a similar window half-set into the roof slope with a gablet. The main roof of this block is covered in corrugated iron and the walls are mostly wet-dash render, with the underlying stonework exposed at the gable junction with the attached single-storey block. The single-storey block is also rectangular, with a central timber sheeted door set within a slightly projecting slated porch, and 6-over-6 timber sash windows to either side. To the south-east are various stone-walled agricultural outbuildings in varying states of repair. These include a former mill for preparing animal feed — stone-walled but now roofless — a row of pig crews, also roofless but retaining arched entrances with fine dressed stone voussoirs and stone enclosure walls, and a further stone-walled outbuilding with a slated roof.

The house is approached from Main Street via a short driveway through a pair of cast iron gates supported on square gate piers of squared basalt blocks with sandstone pyramidal caps. The boundary wall to Main Street is a 1.5-metre-high random rubble basalt wall that curves inwards towards the gate piers. The house sits back from the street within a mature garden to either side of the drive. To the rear, the main part of the site is a rough grassed area with some mature trees and an area to the north-west boundary where a large greenhouse once stood. Closer to the house is a more formal, also grassed, garden. To the south-east is a smaller courtyard of now dilapidated agricultural buildings.

After Dr Macaw's death around 1889–1890, the property was acquired by the Bushmills Old Distillery Company and leased to an A. H. Steen, who appears to have been responsible for naming the property Sharvagh House. Steen died around 1905–1906, and the house passed to Miss Maud Steen, who also acquired the freehold. In 1929 the house came into the possession of Matthew Dysart, passing to Robert E. Eakin the following year, but back in the hands of Mr Dysart by 1941. The present owner's family acquired Sharvagh House in 1947.

The house is noted for its good proportions and detailing both externally and internally, for the quality and survival of its interior, and for the group value provided by the adjacent outbuildings, which are detailed in a similar manner to the main house. It lies within a conservation area.