93 Main Street, Bushmills, Co.Antrim

93 Main Street, Bushmills, County Antrim

This is a two-storey, four-bay, unpainted rendered mid-terrace house built prior to 1834, situated on the west side of Main Street in Bushmills village centre, with the Bush River lying to the west. It forms part of a terrace row with views northward towards the Market Square.

The building was constructed as part of the extensive reconstruction of Bushmills in the early 19th century, carried out from the 1820s onwards by the MacNaghten family of Bushmills House, who had acquired the estate in 1787. The architect is unknown. Originally built as a pair of two-bay houses standing side by side, the property was converted into its current layout as a single four-bay dwelling by around 1930, and was recorded as such in the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), which assessed it at a rateable value of £10.

The building has a rectangular plan with a pitched roof — now covered in fibre cement tiles rather than the original slate, though black clay ridge tiles are retained — and unpainted rendered chimney stacks to both the south-east and north-west sides. The front elevation is finished in unpainted render and is four bays wide. At ground floor level there is a single entrance doorway with a flush timber door and metal door furniture, flanked by two window bays to the left and one to the right, all fitted with 2/2 timber sliding sash windows with horns and exposed sash boxes. The first floor has 1/1 timber sliding sash windows with horns, all set on painted sills. Half-round uPVC guttering to the front elevation discharges to a uPVC circular downpipe; rainwater goods to the rear are also uPVC, painted. The principal elevation faces north-east and is accessed via a paved footpath directly off Main Street. The south-west rear elevation, where visible, has two small timber sliding sash windows at first floor level; the walling here is finished in textured unpainted render. Access to the rear was limited at the time of survey. A single-storey modern outbuilding stands to the rear. The south-east and north-west sides adjoin neighbouring properties at Nos. 95 and 89–91 Main Street. At the time of survey the building was in use as a single private dwelling.

The early documentary record is well preserved. The Townland Valuations Town Plan of around 1834 depicted the original pair of two-bay dwellings, each with a small outbuilding to the rear. The Townland Valuations of 1835 recorded the northernmost dwelling — occupied by a Mr Joseph Craig — at a rateable value of £3, and the southern dwelling — occupied by a Mr William Weir — at £2 and 18 shillings. The valuer classed both as 1A dwellings, meaning new or nearly new buildings, with combined dimensions of 29.6 feet by 21.6 feet and a height of 13 feet. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1859, both houses were valued at £2 and 10 shillings and were leased by a Mr Robert Taylor; the northernmost was occupied by Thomas McQuade and the southern by a Mr George Taylor. Occupants changed frequently throughout the 19th century. During the 1911 Census of Ireland, the two houses were occupied by Elizabeth Carnegie and Elizabeth McCallion respectively; McCallion operated a lodging house from her property, and the census building returns described both structures as second-class dwellings, each containing four rooms with turf houses as their only outbuildings. Following conversion to a single property, the house was occupied by a Mr Adam Bustard, who purchased the site outright around 1964; the Bustard family remained there at least until the end of the Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956–72), by which time the rateable value stood at £14 and 10 shillings. The property was listed in 1980 and subsequently included in the Bushmills Conservation Area, designated in 1992 to preserve the built heritage of a village that holds the highest concentration of listed buildings in the north-east of Northern Ireland.

The 1972 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide to North Antrim described Main Street, Bushmills in the following terms: "A well-scaled street. Many good doorways and shopfronts remain, although there is the usual profusion of signs. While no building apart from the former Courthouse is worthy of individual mention, the unity of the street frontages must be maintained."

Despite alterations — most notably the replacement flush front door and the re-covering of the roof in fibre cement tiles — the building retains its original domestic proportions and historic character within the village setting.