131 Main Street, Bushmills, Co. Antrim, BT57 8QB

131 Main Street is a two-storey, two-bay painted rendered mid-terrace house located on the west side of Main Street in Bushmills, County Antrim, within the Bushmills Conservation Area. It was built between approximately 1834 and 1857, with the architect unknown. The building was delisted on 2 June 2017.

The house has a rectangular plan and sits within a terraced row of similarly scaled buildings, positioned between No. 127 Main Street to the right and No. 133 Main Street to the left, both of which adjoin it on the north-west and south-east sides respectively. It stands due south of Market Square, with its principal elevation facing north-east onto Main Street, parallel to the Bush River.

The front elevation is three bays wide at ground floor level and two bays wide at first floor, with the end bays aligned. It sits on a painted rendered plinth. The walling has a smooth rendered finish, painted to both the front and rear elevations. The entrance doorway is set off-centre to the left and is accessed directly from the footpath; it contains a timber painted panelled door with multi-paned glazing to the upper section. All windows are top-hung timber casements on painted timber sills to the front elevation, with uPVC windows to the rear. Half-round cast-iron guttering to the front elevation discharges to a uPVC downpipe. The roof is covered in artificial slates with a pitched profile, and there are concrete brick chimney stacks to both the south-east and north-west sides.

Whilst the original form, proportions and modest scale survive at the front, the exterior retains little original detailing. The roof, chimneys and windows have all been replaced with materials considered inappropriate and detrimental to the building's character. To the rear, a two-storey flat-roofed extension with a heavy boxed fascia, added around 1984, spans the full width of the rear elevation and obscures much of it; this addition is considered out of keeping with the style of the building. The rear elevation, access to which was limited at the time of survey, faces south-west into an open shared courtyard. There is a ground-floor doorway leading to the rear yard, and all windows and rainwater goods to the rear are of uPVC.

Internally, the staircase is not original and the ground floor plan form has been substantially altered.

To the rear of the property, within the shared courtyard, there is a lime-washed stone vernacular outbuilding adjoined to a slightly taller gabled stone outbuilding. The outbuilding has a natural slate roof with black clay ridge tiles, projecting eaves course and a raised verge to the gable end. Its north-east elevation, which faces into the yard, contains three informally arranged openings with heads set at eaves level: two timber vertically sheeted farm-style doors and a fixed light in the middle. Internally, the walls are of unfinished rubble stone, and the cut-timber roof structure — comprising purlins, rafters and battens — is exposed to the underside of the slates.

The cumulative effect of the various alterations to the main house — to the roof, chimneys, windows and interior plan — was judged to mean that it retains insufficient architectural and historic interest to be considered special, which led to its delisting in 2017.

Historically, an earlier building on the same site was depicted on the Townland Valuation Town Plan of around 1834, though the Townland Valuation of 1835 recorded it as a dilapidated single-storey structure. The valuer also noted at that time that a single-storey rectangular Methodist chapel stood in the yard to the rear, though this was demolished by the mid-19th century. The current two-storey building was constructed prior to 1857, when it first appeared on the second edition Ordnance Survey map, and was recorded in Griffith's Valuation of 1859 with a value of £4, initially occupied by a Mr Daniel Lamont, who leased the site from John Hill, a local national schoolmaster. Occupants changed frequently over the following four decades; by the turn of the 20th century the house was occupied by James Hattie, a local labourer. The 1911 Census of Ireland described No. 131 as a second-class dwelling consisting of six rooms, with a piggery and turf house as its sole outbuildings. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the rateable value rose to £5 and 10 shillings, and the property was leased by the Dinsmore family — occupants of the public house at Nos. 135–137 Main Street — to a Ms Anne Laverty. The Laverty family continued to reside there until around 1968, when the building was purchased by Martin Kerr, occupant of the adjoining No. 133, who leased it to a Ms Minnie Johnston. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value stood at £10 and 10 shillings.

Bushmills was a significant settlement before the end of the 18th century, but from the 1820s the village was extensively rebuilt by the MacNaghten family of Bushmills House, who had acquired the estate in 1787. The Bushmills Conservation Area was designated in 1992 to preserve the built heritage of the village, which holds the highest number of listed buildings in the north-east of Northern Ireland. In 1972 the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society described the buildings along Main Street in general terms as forming "a well-scaled street," noting that while no building apart from the former Courthouse was worthy of individual mention, "the unity of the street frontages must be maintained." No. 131 Main Street was first listed in 1980 before being subsequently included within the conservation area.