67 Maghera Street, Kilrea, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 5QL

67 Maghera Street, Kilrea

This is a semi-detached two-storey-with-attic house, constructed during the mid-19th century and rendered in ruled and lined finish. It occupies a prominent corner position on the north side of Maghera Street at its junction with New Row, in the western part of Kilrea town. The building forms the end of a terrace, with an adjoining building abutting to the east, and a passage to the west giving access via two sets of modern gates to a rear yard. Its neighbours to the west include Second Kilrea Presbyterian Church and a telephone kiosk, both separately listed.

The house is rectangular on plan, with a central two-storey return at the rear and a modern flat-roofed single-storey extension to the north-west re-entrant angle, which is of no architectural interest. The roof is steeply pitched and covered in natural slate, with black and grey angled ridge tiles, and overhanging eaves served by cast-iron ogee rainwater goods, with a further string course of the same guttering above the first floor. Some uPVC rainwater goods have been introduced to the rear. Rendered chimneys with stepped heads and three clay pots rise from both gable ends. Two half-gabled dormer windows flank the centre of the main elevation at attic level, each with timber bargeboards and decorative finials, and rendered lugged architraves.

The walling is generally ruled and lined render, with painted roughcast to the rear elevation and partially raised and rendered quoin strips at the edges. Windows throughout are 1-over-1 margin-paned timber sliding sashes, with some uPVC replacements to the rear returns. Most windows have plain reveals and surrounds with stone sills. On the main elevation, however, the windows are given greater architectural treatment: entablatures carried on panelled pilasters with console brackets to the cornice and sill.

The principal elevation faces south and is symmetrical, with three windows at first-floor level. At ground floor, two windows flank the original centrally-placed four-panelled bolection-moulded door, which retains its brass door furniture and a plain glass transom above; the doorcase is surmounted by a raised pediment supported on a pair of projecting panelled pilasters.

The west elevation has been recently re-rendered in ruled and lined finish, with windows at attic level and a projecting horizontal gutter running across the full width at sill level. A single leaded and stained glass window is present at ground-floor level on the left side. The rear (north) elevation has a central window at attic level, a window to each side of the central return at first-floor level (both screened with vertical metal bars), and a small timber casement at ground-floor level on the left side. The two-storey central return is flat-roofed, with uPVC windows to each floor; its roof perimeter is enclosed with a cast-iron water tank, originally designed to collect rainwater which was then piped into the house. This arrangement survives intact, as does the pipe feeding water into the front ground-floor room, which the current owner identifies as the former kitchen. The building is reputed to be the first house in Kilrea to have had its own water supply.

The east elevation is abutted by the adjoining building and is not visible.

The original appearance has been altered by Victorian additions and some subsequent remodelling. A modern flat-roofed extension was added to the western side of the rear during the mid-to-late 20th century.

To the north of the rear yard stands a detached outbuilding dating from the time the house was built, formerly used as a coach house. It is of rubble construction with a pitched slated roof, a rendered chimney to the right gable, and partially rendered rubble walls. Openings have brick flat-arched heads. The right of centre has a replacement timber-sheeted door with a window to each side; the left side has a large replacement timber-sheeted sliding door. A large pier with a conical cap stands at the south-west corner of the west wall. The rubble boundary walls to the west and east of the yard survive, though the smaller outbuilding that formerly abutted the eastern boundary wall has been removed.

Historically, the footprint of the house and rear outbuilding are first recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 records the property as a private house leased by the Mercers' Company to a William McElwain; together with a small house and a new office to the rear, the total valuation was £9. By 1864, according to the Annual Revisions, the house was in use by Robert Dolling, agent to the Mercers' Company, as a Loan Fund office, functioning in a manner similar to a small bank. Sir William Holmes succeeded Dolling as agent in 1878. The Kilrea Loan Fund Society purchased the property in 1880, and by 1887 the house and associated buildings had been divided in occupation: the Loan Fund Society operated from an office within the house, while the remainder of the house, outbuildings, and yard were leased to an accountant named George Kidd, who also served as clerk to the Loan Fund. The 1901 Census records Kidd residing here with his wife and four children, with the two outbuildings to the rear at that time comprising a stable and a cowshed. Field evidence includes a safe and a large key located beneath the stairs. The total valuation fell to £8 and 20 shillings in 1887 but rose again to £11 by 1908, a rise likely connected to the addition of the central rear return prior to 1905, as shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of that year. By the time of the First General Revaluation in 1935, the whole property was in the ownership of George Kidd and valued at £23.

The building's significance is inseparable from the wider history of the Mercers' Company's involvement in Kilrea. During the Plantation of Ulster, the Worshipful Company of Mercers, one of the principal Livery Companies of the City of London, held direct control over an estate of 33.5 square miles in the area around Kilrea and Movanagher in County Londonderry. By the mid-17th century the estate had been let to nominated individuals, many of them absentee landlords, and it fell into serious decline. Following the death of the last tenant, Alexander Stewart, in 1831, the Mercers' Company repossessed the estate and took direct control. Kilrea became the capital of the proportion, and in the following decades the Company undertook an ambitious programme of improvements to raise productivity, welfare, and the appearance of the estate, with particular focus on Kilrea town. Architects George Smith and William Barnes were appointed, and a cohesive design plan was drawn up which carefully regulated the style and proportions of all new buildings, including this house. The Mercers' estate was subsequently sold to tenants under the Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903.

The building is considered an important feature of the historic character of Kilrea and representative of the aspirational architectural development of the town instigated by the Mercers' Company during the mid-19th century.