Huston's Shirt Factory, 27 Society Street, Coleraine, Co Londonderry, BT52 1LA

Huston's Shirt Factory is a three-storey L-shaped building located on the west side of Society Street in Coleraine, now vacant. Dating from the mid to late 19th century, it was used for shirt manufacturing in the later 1800s and again from 1944 until its closure in 2008.

The building comprises a main range with pitched roofs covered in replacement cement-fibre and profiled metal sheeting, with plastic rainwater goods throughout. Walls are constructed of random rubble stone and brick, rendered in roughcast cement on the street elevations. The principal east-facing façade to Society Street is six openings wide, featuring at ground floor a pedestrian door, sliding door with wicket gate, and wide double-leaf door, all of tongue-and-groove timber. A sign reading 'R.H. Huston & Son Ltd Shirt Manufacturers' is mounted over the sliding door. The ground floor also has a window towards the left. The first floor contains five windows and a double-leaf loading door at the right beneath a projecting gabled eaves canopy. All windows are replacements with timber frames and various pane configurations (1x1, 1x2 and 2x1), with some original sandstone cills replaced in concrete. A two-storey house, now a shell, projects forward at the right-hand end.

The south gable is abutted at ground floor right by the wall of the neighbouring property, with no access behind. This elevation has two windows to each upper floor; all are 1x2 timber replacements except the first floor left window, which retains a 6x6 timber sliding sash. The rear west elevation is largely obscured by a mid-20th century two-storey flat-roofed extension of rendered concrete brick, though an exposed gable at the left end of the main building contains modern window and door inserts to the second floor. The north elevation shows random rubble basalt at ground floor with a modern doorway at the right-hand end, while upper floors are brick with no openings.

The building appears on the 1882 Coleraine large-scale town map, though it is uncertain whether the same structure is depicted on earlier maps from 1830 and 1850. Nineteenth-century valuation records initially described it as two outbuildings belonging to adjacent houses on New Row. The 1875 valuation notes William Galbraith as manager for Thomas Rogers of London, a shirt manufacturer, with the 1879 entry recording a "new house and manufactory in Society Street". Evidence suggests shirt making may have begun as early as 1863 under William G Self, with Henry Rogers recorded in 1865 and 1877. In 1894, Messrs Rogers relocated to a purpose-built factory on Beresford Road.

The premises subsequently served other purposes before R.H. Huston established a shirt-making business there in 1944, renting initially before purchasing outright. A substantial rear extension was added around 1955, entailing demolition of the south return of the original block. The factory employed approximately 70 people at its peak in the late 1950s, with electrically driven sewing machinery predominant. Work was primarily undertaken on a cut, make and trim basis for other manufacturers, though in later years the Hustons also made shirts under their own account. Overseas competition, declining orders and factory legislation led to closure in 2008. The building is of local historical interest as the last operational shirt factory in Coleraine, but does not meet the threshold for listing.