3 Kingsgate Street, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52 1LB

3 Kingsgate Street, Coleraine, was a three-storey building of brick or rendered construction that was demolished around 1998 following planning approval for its replacement. At the time of its demolition, it featured a modern shopfront, with upper windows that were either modern, Georgian-paned or plain sashed. The roof was slated and chimneys were of brick or finished in render.

The building occupied a historically significant location on the line of the former city ramparts, which were levelled during the eighteenth century. Kingsgate Street marks the position of a former gateway to the fortified town of Coleraine. Earthen ramparts surrounded by a ditch had been constructed at the time of plantation in 1611. By 1622, what was formerly known as the East Gate of the town had been fitted with a small gate and drawbridge, 12 feet wide, having a small timber room over it that was slated. By 1710, however, the town gates had been dismantled, although the ramparts remained in the Kingsgate area for some years. In 1738, a holding of 17 perches in the Kingsgate area was appropriated for a school funded by the Irish Society, situated at the point where the road widens in Kingsgate Street.

By the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830, no rampart was evident on the south side of Kingsgate Street, and the former line of the rampart had been built over by numbers 1, 3, 5 and 7. Numbers 1, 3 and 5 were shown as three separate houses. The valuation fieldbook from the 1830s records that numbers 1, 3, 5 and 7 were of identical height and depth but varied in the width of their street frontage. All four buildings had cellar kitchens. Number 1 was a house and offices with a slated shed, thatched byre, stable and store to the rear. Number 3 was a house and offices, also with outbuildings.

At the time of Griffith's Valuation (1856-64), number 3 was occupied by Hugh Nevins and was a leather warehouse, described as a neat shop but with upper parts that were little used. The building was valued at £14. The house was leased from Stephen Bennett of Greenfield. Subsequent occupiers included Samuel Lithgow, Robert Lithgow, Thomas Lithgow (1877), William White (1884), Susan White (1924) and Millicent White (1931), with the White family remaining resident until at least the 1930s. At the 1911 census, the occupier was listed as widow Susan White, who lived with her son, a farmer, her daughter and a boarder employed as an assistant in the iron-mongery shop. The family employed two live-in servants, a general domestic and a farm servant.

Valuer's notes of the 1930s record the accommodation as a basement cellar, a shop, kitchen and scullery on the ground floor with a side entrance to the living accommodation, a bedroom and reception on the first floor, and two bedrooms on the second floor. The tenant put in new shop windows and fitted out the shop in 1933. The associated plan shows the shop with rear returns containing a scullery and store, open shed and WC together with outbuildings at the rear of the yard. The building was listed in 1977 and permission to demolish was granted in 1998, after which it was replaced with modern shops.