58 Castle Street, Ballycastle, Co Antrim, BT54 6AR

58 Castle Street is a plain, partly modernised two-storey terraced shop with dwelling, of possible later 18th century construction — likely dating from around 1740 to 1770 — situated on the north side of Castle Street to the west of Ballycastle town centre. It forms an important part of the streetscape and retains considerable signs of its age despite successive alterations. The building is listed alongside its outbuildings and falls within a conservation area.

The asymmetrical south-facing front elevation is rendered and painted. At ground-floor level, the dwelling doorway to the left consists of a modern partly glazed door with a large rectangular fanlight and a narrow sidelight to the right. To the right of this is a shop front of approximately 1950s style, with simple modern glazing and a recessed doorway with a modern glazed door; a painted timber signboard sits above the shop front, with a mosaic in the step beside a curved window. At first-floor level, three unevenly spaced windows have modern timber frames with lattice panes. (The two windows to the left of these appear to belong to the neighbouring no. 56 but in fact belong to no. 58.) A projecting neon Christmas decoration sits between the second and third windows, and a satellite dish is fixed to the far right. The roof of the main building is covered in artificial slates, with two Velux windows to the front slope and a rendered chimney stack at the east end. PVC rainwater goods are fitted throughout.

To the rear, the back elevation is entirely covered by a large two-storey gabled return, which has been extended to the west by two lean-to additions — one single-storey and one two-storey. The single-storey lean-to has a timber door and a sash window with two-over-two vertical glazing bars; its west face has two similar windows. This lean-to abuts the two-storey lean-to to the south, which has windows to both its north and west faces at first-floor level, fitted with modern frames. At ground-floor level on the west face of the two-storey lean-to, a very small single-storey lean-to belonging to no. 56 abuts the structure. The return and lean-tos are finished in a mixture of roughcast and dry dash. The return roof is also covered in artificial slates, with a Velux window to the west side and a chimney stack at the gable.

Extending northward from the north gable of the return is a long, low two-storey gabled outbuilding constructed in basalt rubble with a corrugated iron roof. This outbuilding pre-dates 1834 and originally contained a number of small dwellings. A similar row once stood on the opposite side of the yard — historically known as Boyd's Yard — but that row has since been demolished.

The property was at one time part of a larger single building shared with the neighbouring no. 56 to the west. The first valuation of December 1834 records a large old house of combined dimensions corresponding to the present nos. 56 and 58, then occupied by an Adam Boyd and a Patrick Black. Later valuations record no major structural changes, indicating that the eastern half of that 1834 dwelling is substantially what survives today as no. 58. The combined property was probably among the 127 two-storey houses noted in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1835, and significant sections of the internal detailing support an 18th century date, consistent with the period when much of Castle Street took its present form under the improving landlord Hugh Boyd. The Adam Boyd recorded as a 1834 occupant may be the same man listed as a grocer in Pigot and Co's 1824 Directory.

By 1859 the large house had been divided into two properties. No. 58 at that time was occupied by an Andrew Boyd and comprised a parlour and kitchen on the ground floor, two rooms above, garrets, a kitchen in the return, and a room over the return. The rear yard at that date contained a range of seven small dwellings occupied by John Sharpe, James Kenny, Patrick Carroll, John Hunter, Daniel McCollum, Mary McCrank (name uncertain), and Charles McDougall, along with a bakery — presumed to be at the south end close to the return. It is noted as a coincidence that the present shop operates as an outlet for a local bakery. Andrew Boyd was followed as occupant by Eliza McCambridge in 1874, then James McCurdy in 1906, then John Glass in 1923, whose family remained until approximately the mid-1980s, running a grocer's shop from the premises. The current occupants acquired the shop around 1986, using it as a bakery outlet while renovating and renting out the living quarters. Most of the small dwellings to the rear had already been abandoned prior to 1923, when they are recorded as being in ruins, though one — possibly the unit closest to the return, above the former bakery — appears to have remained occupied until around 1950. The row on the opposite side of Boyd's Yard was demolished in approximately the 1980s.