63-65 Castle Street, Ballycastle, County Antrim, BT54 6AS

63–65 Castle Street is a two-storey terrace building on the south side of Castle Street, just to the west of Ballycastle town centre, originally constructed as a house (or possibly as two houses) around the 1740s. It has been significantly altered over time and now functions as a shop at ground-floor level with a residential apartment above. The building has little architectural character.

The asymmetrical north-facing front elevation reflects the building's complicated history. At ground-floor level there is a modern shop front consisting of a recessed doorway with a partly glazed timber door, flanked on both sides by large three-light timber-framed windows. The shop front is encased in recent fluted timber pilasters which support a timber signboard with raised lettering. To the right of the shop front is a separate doorway providing access to the apartment above. At first-floor level there are three uniform, evenly spaced windows with moulded surrounds and horned timber sash windows with plate glass glazing. A projecting signboard sits between the first and second windows, and a projecting street lamp between the second and third. The gabled roof of the original section is slated, with at least one Velux window to the rear slope, and there is a rendered ridge chimneystack at the east end. Rainwater goods are a mixture of cast iron and PVCu. To the rear, a very large single-storey extension — added in the mid to late 1990s — covers the full ground-floor footprint of the rear elevation of the original section, obscuring the first-floor level of that section from view.

The building's history can be traced through valuation records back to January 1835, when an old dwelling measuring 32 feet by 23½ feet by 16½ feet — possibly of mid-18th-century origin — was recorded on this site in the hands of a Denis McElherin and a Mrs Blair. The presence of two occupants suggests the building was already divided at this stage, though the valuers refer to it as a single dwelling, indicating it was probably not built as two separate units. By 1859 the property was officially recorded as two dwellings — later numbered 63 and 65 — each containing a shop and kitchen at ground-floor level, two rooms above, and garrets, though No. 65 to the east was noted as having an inferior finish. To the rear of the main building at this time stood three smaller dwellings: one two-storey and two single-storey.

At this period, a James McMichael was both leaseholder and tenant of No. 65 and also held the leases of the smaller rear dwellings. The two-storey rear house, which contained a single room measuring 12 feet by 12 feet on each floor, was occupied by a Robert Chambers, while a Thomas Cook and an Anne McCullagh rented the other two rear buildings, each measuring 18 feet by 12 feet. No. 63 to the west was occupied by a Margaret McKay, with a George Daly holding the lease.

In 1885, after No. 63 had passed through the hands of six further tenants, valuers recorded that its front had been rebuilt and that the roofs of both No. 63 and No. 65 had been raised by 2½ feet. The following year the rear dwellings were recorded as being in ruins. The McMichael family continued to occupy No. 65 after 1885, with Jane McMichael remaining there until around 1922. A family named McAuley was resident in No. 63 from 1887 until around 1930.

In 1935 an Alexander McLean is recorded as renting both properties from a John Mitchell. A William Jameson was in residence between 1938 and 1941, followed by an Alexander Frayne from 1942 to 1949. In 1949 an Anthony P. Kelly became leaseholder and tenant, remaining at least until 1972. The present owner, who acquired the building in 1998, states that the property has operated as a chemist's shop since the 1930s, that the first-floor apartment — which takes in the upper floors of both former houses — was created around 1980, and that the large rear extension was added in the mid to late 1990s.

The building lies within a conservation area. It is not listed.