15 Main St., Bushmills, Co.Antrim

No. 15 Lower Main Street is a single-storey, three-bay, mid-terraced house built prior to 1832 as part of the early 19th-century terrace at nos. 5–19 Lower Main Street, Bushmills. The terrace was formerly known as 'Metal Row', taking its name from the adjacent Woodville House Mill — a two-storey dwelling and former iron foundry — which stands immediately to the north, and from the nail makers, foundry workers and mill workers who subsequently lived here. The terrace sits on the west side of Lower Main Street with views south to Market Square, at the northern end of Bushmills village centre, with the Bush River to the west.

The house has a rectangular plan form with a pitched roof and a single-storey flat-roof extension to the rear. The exterior walls are pebble dashed throughout. The replacement pitched roof is finished in fibre cement with black clay ridge tiles, and there is a single unpainted rendered chimney stack at the south-west end carrying two circular terracotta clay pots. Rainwater goods are uPVC front and rear.

The principal elevation faces south-east onto Main Street and is three bays wide, set on an unpainted rendered plinth. As with the other properties along the terrace row, the elevation is divided by unpainted rendered quoins. The windows are small timber top-hung units with painted stone sloping sills and painted rendered band surrounds. The slightly recessed central doorway contains a replacement timber door with glazed top panes and metal door furniture, set within a stepped concrete architrave surround with stop blocks. Both side elevations are abutted by the neighbouring properties — no. 17 to the south-west and no. 13 to the north-east. The rear (north-west) elevation, which was not directly accessible at the time of survey but was observed from the rear of no. 17, shows the single-storey flat-roof extension, three bays wide, with a single door opening to the left and two window bays containing timber casement windows.

The terrace was first recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832 in its current layout. Its construction was part of the broader rebuilding and expansion of Bushmills from the 1820s onwards, carried out by the Macnaghten family, who had acquired the estate in 1787. Sir Edmund Macnaghten of Dundarave House was responsible for this development. The Townland Valuation of around 1834 records the house as occupied by a Mr. John McGeehan and valued at £2 19s. 6d. It was described at that time as a thatched building of medium age but in sound order and good repair, measuring 30ft by 19.6ft and standing 7.6ft in height. By Griffith's Valuation of 1859, the property had been leased by Sir Edmund Macnaghten to a Mr. Joseph Dinsmore and its value had risen slightly to £3. Dinsmore remained at the property until around 1886, when it passed to Hugh McNaul. Under the 1901 Census of Ireland, the house was occupied by Daniel Cochrane, a local agricultural labourer, together with his wife and two children. The census building return confirms that by the turn of the 20th century the thatched roofs of nos. 5–19 Lower Main Street had been replaced with slates, and no. 15 was recorded as a second-class dwelling with four inhabited rooms. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) records the value increased to £3 10s., with the property leased to a number of tenants during this period. By the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), no. 15 had been purchased outright by a Mr. William Gault and its value was further raised to £6 10s.

Although the property has been altered — most notably through the replacement of the original thatched and later slated roof with fibre cement, and the addition of the rear flat-roof extension and uPVC rainwater goods — it retains its external historic character through its simple proportions and original window surrounds to the front elevation. It has group value as part of the broader terrace, nos. 5–19 Lower Main Street. No. 15 was listed in 1980 and forms part of the Bushmills Conservation Area, designated in 1992. Bushmills holds the highest number of listed buildings of any town or village in the north-east of Northern Ireland.