95 Main Street, Bushmills, Co.Antrim

95 Main Street, Bushmills, County Antrim

This is a two-storey, two-bay mid-terrace house built prior to 1834, situated on the west side of Main Street on the southern side of Bushmills village centre, with the Bush River to the west. It forms part of a cohesive group of similarly proportioned terraced houses with Nos. 97, 99 and 101–103 Main Street. At the time of survey it was occupied as a single private dwelling.

Exterior

The front elevation faces north-east and is finished in painted smooth render set on a rendered plinth painted in a contrasting colour, with rendered quoins to the right side. The pitched slate roof has black clay ridge tiles and an unpainted rendered chimney stack to the north-west side. Rainwater goods to the front consist of half-round uPVC guttering discharging to a cast-iron circular downpipe; the rear has painted uPVC guttering throughout.

The ground floor of the principal elevation contains a single entrance doorway to the left, fitted with a replacement timber door and a plain glazed transom light over, alongside a large timber casement window. The first floor has a single window bay — not aligned with the bays below — containing a 1/1 timber sliding sash. The north-west and south-east sides are adjoined to the neighbouring properties at Nos. 93 and 97 Main Street respectively.

To the rear, the south-west elevation is abutted by a painted rendered single-storey extension with a lean-to roof. The rear wall is of smooth rendered painted finish with two timber casement windows at first-floor level. A single-storey outbuilding to the rear is finished in painted pebble dash with a tin roof.

The replacement casement window on the front elevation does not respect the historic character of the building. An internal renovation took place around 2013.

History

No. 95 Main Street was built as part of the extensive reconstruction of Bushmills carried out from the 1820s onwards by the MacNaghten family of Bushmills House, who had acquired the estate in 1787. The building first appears on the Townland Valuations Town Plan of around 1834 as a simple rectangular structure with a long return and outbuilding to the rear. The Townland Valuation of 1835 recorded the property as occupied by a Mr. Patrick McIninch and valued it at £2 13 shillings. The valuer classified it as a 1B- class dwelling — that is, a slated building of medium age that had deteriorated and was not in perfect repair — measuring 13.6 feet by 22.6 feet and standing 12 feet in height, with a byre and a store as rear outbuildings.

Little change to the layout was recorded by the second edition Ordnance Survey of 1857. Griffith's Valuation of 1859 reduced the value slightly to £2 10 shillings and noted that the building was by then leased by Hugh McNaul, a prominent local landowner, to a Ms. Rose Johnston. Occupants changed frequently over the following decades, and by the turn of the 20th century the property was being leased by the MacNaghten estate to a Mary Jane Twaddle, who operated a grocer's shop from the premises — an arrangement that likely accounts for the notably large ground-floor window opening. The 1901 Census of Ireland described the building as a second-class dwelling and shop comprising five rooms with a store as its only outbuilding, which has since been demolished.

By the 1930s ownership had passed to the Misses Sarah and Jane Alexander. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) raised the rateable value to £6 10 shillings and recorded the occupant as a Ms. Margaret Esdale. The Esdale family continued to lease the property from the Alexanders at least until the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), by which time the total rateable value stood at £7 10 shillings.

In 1972 the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society's 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."

The building was listed in 1980 and was subsequently included in the Bushmills Conservation Area, designated in 1992 to preserve the built heritage of a village that contains the highest number of listed buildings in the north-east of Northern Ireland.