SUNDIAL HOUSE, (inlcuding gate and walling), 11 HIGH STREET, CUSHENDALL, CO.ANTRIM

Sundial House, 11 High Street, Cushendall, County Antrim

Sundial House is an end-of-terrace, three-bay, two-storey house with attic, built in 1849 and rendered throughout. It occupies a prominent elevated position on the northeast side of High Street, terminating a terrace of houses that climbs steeply up from the village centre of Cushendall. The house is L-shaped in plan, facing southwest, with a two-storey rear return and a two-storey extension filling the re-entrant angle. It is attached to No. 9 High Street on its southeast side.

Exterior

The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles. Four symmetrically placed rendered chimneystacks carry lipped and octagonal clay pots. Three steel skylight units of the Velux type are set into the front pitch. Cast-iron guttering runs on iron drive-through brackets to the rendered eaves course, with cast-iron downpipes below. The external walls are finished in painted ruled-and-lined render with painted rusticated masonry quoins.

Window openings are square-headed with moulded stucco surrounds and are fitted with replacement 6/6 sliding timber sash windows with concave horns and exposed sash boxes.

The front elevation is symmetrical across three bays with an off-centre gabled entrance porch. The porch has a pitched natural slate roof with cast-iron rainwater goods and a timber bargeboard. The gablet above the door opening is inscribed with the letters 'SUNDIAL HOUSE 1849'. The doorway itself is fitted with a replacement flat-panelled timber door set within a replacement surround of slender pilasters flanking the opening, with four-pane sidelights and a spoked timber fanlight, all contained within a painted stucco surround. Square-headed openings to either cheek of the porch are fitted with replacement top-hung timber casement windows. The door opens onto a single concrete step leading down to an enclosed front area. The remains of a previous door opening survive to the left of the porch.

The northwest side elevation is blind, gabled, unpainted, and rendered. Embedded within it is an elliptical voussoired rubble red sandstone carriage arch, which adjoins the corresponding arch of the adjacent No. 13 High Street. The rear elevation features a central gable-ended two-storey return, with the two-storey extension to the re-entrant angle covered by a catslide natural slate roof with skylights. UPVC windows are present to the return only. A sunken paved yard with concrete steps leads to the rear garden.

Setting and Boundary Treatments

The house sits behind a rendered wall with rubblestone coping, punctuated by a single pedestrian iron gate hung on painted stop-chamfered stone piers, with tiled steps down to the front pavement. The sunken rear yard is accessed via a shared lane to the northwest and leads by steps to the rear garden. The listing extends to include the porch, front walls and gate, and the stone carriage arch attached to the gable wall.

History

The majority of buildings along High Street were erected in the first half of the 19th century under the direction of Francis Turnly, the landowning proprietor of Cushendall. Turnly had travelled to China in 1796, where he accumulated a fortune of around £75,000. In 1801 he used this money to purchase the estate of Newtownglens from the Richardson family for £24,000, subsequently renaming the settlement Cushendall. At the time of purchase the village comprised little more than a handful of cabins, a mill, and a bridge. As tourism increased — principally travellers passing through on the way to the Giant's Causeway — Turnly developed the village into a coastal resort, erecting hotels such as the Glens of Antrim on Shore Street, and numerous commercial properties. He has been described as an eccentric character who "effected extraordinary improvements in buildings and roads on his property."

Sundial House was first recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of Cushendall in 1857 and in Griffith's Valuation of 1859, where its value was initially set at £13. At that time it was leased by Daniel Jamison, a local rate collector residing at Nos. 13–15 High Street, to the Reverend James Dunseath of Layd Parish Church. The Reverend Dunseath continued to reside here until around 1874, when the house briefly passed to a Mrs Baker.

In 1885 the property was occupied by Katherine McDonnell, who established a hospital on the premises. Katherine was the granddaughter of Dr James McDonnell, who had founded the first fever hospital in Ireland and the Belfast School of Medicine. The hospital operated from Sundial House until 1896, when the McDonnell family established the purpose-built Cottage Hospital on Shore Road, and the house subsequently reverted to use as a private dwelling.

By the 1930s the property was occupied by John Macaulay, as recorded in the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), with its value remaining at £13. Macaulay continued in residence until 1960, when a Miss Mona Dempsey took possession. Dempsey purchased the house outright from the Turnly estate in 1967 and established a bed and breakfast in 1969; by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value stood at £28.

A 1972 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society survey described High Street as "an outstandingly attractive street, of quite exceptional merit and character, climbing very steeply indeed from the crossing of the main street to Court McMartin, almost every building in it of individual merit apart from the value of the group as a whole; the roofs, gables, doors and windows rise in an irregular staircase up the hillside." Sundial House itself was noted as "dated 1849, a nice two-storey stucco quoined house with a pretty porch and Regency glazing." The buildings along High Street were included in the Cushendall Conservation Area in 1975 — only the second conservation area in the province to have been designated — a distinction described as "testimony itself to the special qualities of the village." That same year Cushendall was selected as one of Northern Ireland's four pilot schemes for conservation during the European Architectural Heritage Year. The house was listed in 1976. Extensive renovation works carried out in 1990 included reslating, the installation of cast-iron rainwater goods, and fitting a new entrance door.