43 Main Street, Bushmills, Co.Antrim

43 Main Street, Bushmills, County Antrim

This is a two-and-a-half-storey, three-bay, painted rendered house built around 1835 on the west side of Main Street in Bushmills village centre, just north of Market Square, with the River Bush lying to the west. It forms part of the early 19th-century reconstruction of the village carried out by the MacNaghten family of Bushmills House, who had acquired the estate in 1787. The building sits within the Bushmills Conservation Area, which was designated in 1992 to protect the built heritage of a village that contains the highest concentration of listed buildings in the north-east of Northern Ireland.

The house has a rectangular plan. Its principal elevation faces north-east and is accessed by a paved footpath from Main Street. The rendered walls are painted throughout on the front elevation. The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, concrete coping stones to the north-west side at front and rear skews, and a single stone chimney-stack on the north-west side carrying octagonal buff clay pots. Half-round painted cast-aluminium guttering on out-and-up brackets discharges to painted cast-aluminium circular downpipes on the front elevation.

The front elevation is three bays wide on the ground and first floors, with two wall dormers above aligned with the outer bays. All windows are 1/1 timber sliding sashes on painted sills. At ground floor level, a replacement painted timber four-panel door sits centrally on the elevation with a plain glazed transom light above, flanked by a window opening on each side. The two wall dormers were a later addition, not present in a photograph taken around the turn of the 20th century, and were added in the late 20th century; Edwardian-style barge boards have been fitted to these dormers and are considered to have enhanced the historic character of the building.

The south-east elevation is joined to the neighbouring property at No. 45 Lower Main Street. The north-west elevation abuts an adjoining property at first floor level, with the ground floor walling in painted rendered finish. The south-west rear elevation is abutted by a modern unpainted rendered lean-to extension of around 2004 with a man-made slate roof and a single roof light. On either side of this extension, the main rear elevation has a 1/1 timber sliding sash window at ground and first floor levels and a small timber casement at attic level. Two small conservation-type roof lights are fitted to the rear slope. Doorways provide rear entrances on the north-west elevation of the rendered extension and similarly on its south-east side. The south-west elevation of the rear extension is blank.

To the south-west end of the site, set back behind a secured high rendered wall, stands a separate outbuilding. This has a pitched man-made slated roof with a single roof light, a tall rendered chimney-stack with two octagonal buff clay pots, and walls of textured unpainted rendered finish with uPVC rainwater goods throughout. A circular painted timber window is present at first floor level on the south-west elevation; the remaining windows are not visible.

The building's history is well documented. It appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832 and the Townland Valuation Town Plan of around 1834. The Townland Valuation of 1835 described it as an unfinished first-class building — meaning a new or nearly new slated structure — measuring 24.6 feet by 27.6 feet and standing 19 feet in height, initially occupied by a Mr William McDuffy and valued at £4 and 11 shillings. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1859 the value had risen to £8, and the property was leased by the MacNaghten family to John Hall, a local building contractor. Hall remained until around 1875, when Thomas Halliday — recorded in the 1901 Census of Ireland as a retired Royal Irish Constabulary officer — moved in, his family staying until around 1909. The 1901 census building return described the house as a second-class dwelling with nine inhabited rooms and a turf house as its sole out-office. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1902 recorded the house in its current layout with a small square outbuilding to the rear. Around 1909 Charles Forbes, a local Petty Sessions Clerk, purchased the property outright from the MacNaghten estate. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the rateable value was raised to £13, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) it had been further increased to £21. The building was listed in 1980.

Around 1992 the house underwent extensive renovation including roof restoration and the installation of new windows and entrance doors. Around 2004 a fire caused severe damage and resulted in the loss of all original interior features. The building was subsequently restored and converted into two self-contained apartments. Despite the cumulative effect of these alterations, the restoration has been carried out sensitively and the building retains its original simple domestic proportions and historic character within the village streetscape.