57 Main Street, Bushmills, Co.Antrim

57 Main Street, Bushmills, County Antrim

This is a two-and-a-half-storey former house with ground-floor shop, built in smooth-rendered painted masonry, most likely around 1840 and certainly in place by 1855. It sits on the west side of Main Street on an internal corner site at the north-west corner of Market Square, with the River Bush immediately to the west. The building forms part of a terrace row but is set back slightly from the neighbouring property to the north-west at No. 55 Main Street.

The construction of this building belongs to a broader programme of village reconstruction carried out from the 1820s onwards by the MacNaghten family of Bushmills House, who had acquired the Bushmills estate in 1787. No. 57 was not recorded on the Townland Valuation Town Plan of around 1834 or the accompanying Townland Valuations of 1835, and was most likely erected around 1840 alongside the laying out of Market Square and the construction of the second bridge across the River Bush. It first appears with certainty on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1855. Griffith's Valuation of 1859 recorded a total rateable value of £11 and noted the building as initially leased by a Martha McElroy to one Lyle Taggart, who ran a grocer's shop from the premises. Taggart remained until around 1870, after which a succession of tenants occupied the building over the following decades. By the time of the 1911 Census, the building was home to Annie Hunter, who lived there with her three children and was employed as a local carter. The census building return classified it as a second-class dwelling with six inhabited rooms, and listed among its outbuildings two stables, a piggery, a turf house, and a shed. The Hunter family remained at the address until 1939, when the property was purchased outright from the MacNaghten estate by Margaret Kelly. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (covering 1936 to 1957) raised the rateable value to £12 and 10 shillings. Ownership passed to Albert Henderson in 1961, and by the close of the Second General Revaluation (1956 to 1972) the rateable value stood at £19. The building was listed in 1980 and was subsequently included within 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. Around 1994, the upper floors of Nos. 57 to 61 Main Street were converted into self-contained flats, while the ground floors of each building continued in retail use.

The rectangular plan building is four bays wide and rises two-and-a-half storeys beneath a naturally slated pitched roof. Stone chimney stacks are positioned at both the south-east and north-west ends of the roof, each carrying four decorative octagonal buff-coloured clay pots, all set on a painted rendered plinth. Half-round cast-iron guttering to the front discharges to a cast-iron circular downpipe, though the upper section of that downpipe is missing.

The principal elevation faces north-east and is accessed directly from the paved footpath on Market Square. At ground floor level, the right-hand side is occupied by a shop front of particular note: it comprises a single entrance doorway and two separate window bays, each divided by five-sided engaged stone columns supporting a stone frieze and cornice above. The frieze is currently without commercial signage. The doorway contains a panelled timber painted door with sidelights and a transom light over. This shop front, with its five-sided engaged stone columns beneath the stone frieze and cornice, is a feature not found elsewhere in Bushmills and makes a positive contribution to the village centre setting. To the left of the shop front is a former coach archway set within a slightly recessed rendered bay that rises to first-floor level. This archway is now infilled at ground-floor level with a timber-framed screen containing a painted panelled timber door with integrated sidelights and a fanlight over.

At first-floor level, there are three square-headed window bays above the shop front and a single bay over the former coach archway, this last containing a single window opening with a shallow arched head. All windows to the front are one-over-one timber sliding sashes set on painted sills. At attic level, a wall-head dormer window is aligned with the central bay of the first-floor windows below.

The south-east and north-west side elevations adjoin neighbouring properties at Nos. 61 and 53–55 Main Street respectively. The south-west rear elevation is partially visible from behind No. 61 Main Street. At the rear, a single-storey return to the left side has an artificial slate roof and paired one-over-one modern timber sliding sash windows, along with a back door on the south-east side. To the right of the return there is a single one-over-one timber sliding sash window at ground floor level (the remainder of the ground floor at the rear is not visible), three one-over-one timber sliding sash windows at first-floor level, and a large metal fire escape stair giving access to the attic-level flat, reached via a PVC door below the wall-head dormer. Rainwater goods to the rear are PVC.

Although the front facade has been altered — with the eaves raised, a wall-head dormer added, and a third window opening inserted between the original two openings at first-floor level — the building retains considerable character and historic integrity, particularly through its distinctive ground-floor shop front.