1 Strand Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 3AA

1 Strand Road is a three-storey former townhouse, now flats over a commercial unit, built around 1850 to designs by Samuel Angell (1800–1866), a London-based architect appointed as surveyor to the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers in 1824. The building was constructed as the rear return to No. 2 Waterside (a separate listed building), and was extended around 1890. It sits on the west side of Strand Road in Coleraine town centre, on a prominent corner site at the junction with the road bridge over the River Bann, facing east onto the river.

Angell designed the wider Waterside Terrace around 1850, replacing an earlier street that had appeared on the first edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1830, whilst adhering to the same street layout. The terrace is considered one of the earliest surviving and most significant groups of buildings in Coleraine, and together with No. 2 Waterside represents the sole remaining example of an intact mid-19th century streetscape in the town. The building has group value with the other listed terraces fronting Waterside.

This area, known as Killowen Parish and now called Waterside, was originally a suburb of Coleraine under the ownership of the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers, one of the London Merchant Companies charged with developing and settling County Londonderry during the early 17th century. In the spirit of the times, it was considered more appropriate to demolish and entirely rebuild the Waterside area in order to create a more dignified approach into the Company's estate from the main part of Coleraine to the east.

The building is Georgian in style, with a rectangular plan and a hipped natural slate roof with blue-black angled ridges and hips. There are two chimneystack — one red brick and one rendered — each carrying tall clay pots. Rainwater goods are plastic, fixed to projecting boxed eaves. The walling is Flemish-bonded dark red brick with channel-rusticated painted smooth render at ground floor level. Windows throughout are replacement 6/6 timber sash with horns, set in flat-arched openings with rendered and painted reveals and projecting painted sills.

The east-facing principal elevation is divided into two bays. The right-hand bay is original, with three windows to the upper floors and a modern shop front at ground floor level, approached by a raised canted entrance via a set of tiled steps. The left-hand bay, added around 1890, is narrower, with two windows to the upper floors and a window and modern doorcase at ground floor. The south elevation is fully abutted by a modern three-storey extension (the replacement No. 1A). To the re-entrant angle at the left is a mono-pitched modern extension; an open walkway connects the upper floors to a modern extension to the south and a neighbouring extension to the west. The west (rear) elevation is largely concealed. The north elevation abuts No. 2 Waterside. An underground car park sits beneath the modern extension to the rear.

The upper floors retain their original Georgian character with restrained detailing and regular fenestration, but the integrity of the design is compromised at ground floor level by the insertion of an inappropriate shop front and openings.

In terms of historical occupation, the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1849–50 first depicted No. 2 Waterside and its return (No. 1 Strand Road) as an L-shaped building. At that time, the adjacent No. 1A Strand Road was detached and used as a stable or coach house. By Griffith's Valuation of 1856, the combined site — encompassing No. 2 Waterside and Nos. 1 and 1A Strand Road — was valued at £48 and leased by the Clothworkers to Edward Gribbin, a haberdasher, linen yarn merchant, and soap manufacturer recorded in the Ulster Town Directories from as early as 1843 and operating as Edward Gribbin & Sons from 1852. The three properties continued to be jointly valued until 1875, when the site was subdivided: the house (comprising No. 2 Waterside and No. 1 Strand Road) was valued at £30, and the former two-storey offices at No. 1A at £18, used by Gribbin as a warehouse. Edward Gribbin died in 1875, when his sons Henry Albert and John Gribbin took over the business. By that year, No. 1 Strand Road was occupied by Alexander Tannahill, recorded in the 1877 Ulster Town Directory as a draper. The town plan of Coleraine dating from around 1882 to 1907 records that the connecting block between Nos. 1 and 1A Strand Road was added in the mid-to-late 19th century, comprising two bays constructed sympathetically in red brick. The 1901 Census records Tannahill — then aged 60, a widower and Reformed Presbyterian — residing at No. 2 Waterside and No. 1 Strand Road with his six children; the building return described it as a first-class dwelling of 12 rooms. Tannahill continued to reside there until 1930, when a Mr David Lamb took possession. No. 1A remained in Gribbin family ownership until the cancellation of the Annual Revisions in 1931. By the First General Revaluation of 1935, Edward Gribbin & Sons were recorded as occupants of No. 1A for the last time, with the warehouse valued at £19, whilst No. 2 Waterside and No. 1 Strand Road, valued at £27, was by then occupied by a Mr Hugh McDermott. By the second revaluation of 1956–72, both Nos. 1 and 1A Strand Road had been acquired by D. Todd & Sons, a local firm, who leased the buildings as offices and commercial premises. A survey image from around 1970 records that the ground floor of No. 1 Strand Road had by that point been converted to commercial use with the installation of modern shopfronts. Both No. 2 Waterside and Nos. 1 and 1A Strand Road were listed in 1977. Subsequently, No. 1A was demolished and replaced with the current modern three-storey building, which reflects the style of the original in having a cream-coloured façade and dark quoins. The ground floor of No. 1 Strand Road is currently in use as a medical centre, and the upper floors have been converted to residential flats. These alterations have resulted in the loss of all historic interior fabric.