Scotch House, 51 Main Street, Bushmills, Co.Antrim

Scotch House, 51 Main Street, Bushmills, County Antrim

This is a former house and long-established public house built around 1834, forming part of a terrace on the west side of Main Street in Bushmills. It is a two-storey, three-bay building of rectangular plan, smoothly rendered and painted throughout, with a fibre cement pitched roof carrying two unpainted rendered chimney stacks — one rising from the south-east side and one from the north-west — both centred on the ridge. The listing covers the public house, a rear outbuilding, and a portion of the boundary wall.

The principal elevation faces north-east and is accessed directly from the pavement on Main Street. At ground floor level, the right-hand side contains a shop front with a single entrance doorway flanked by two large window bays, each divided into six individual panes with segmental arched heads to the upper panes. The entrance doorway has a four-panel painted timber door with glazed top panels and a glazed transom light over; the previous owners' details are inscribed in this transom. To either side of the shop front are pedimented timber pilasters with a plain painted timber frieze above, from which commercial signage is now missing. To the left of the shop front is a large former coach archway, now closed off from the street by a pair of vertically sheeted timber gates giving access to an enclosed rear yard. Above the coach archway on the first floor is a small timber casement window. The whole ground floor sits on a painted rendered plinth.

The first floor has three square-headed window bays containing timber sliding sash windows, all set on painted sills. Above these, at attic level, are two wall dormers which are not aligned with the bays below. Half-round cast-iron guttering discharges to cast-iron circular downpipes on the front elevation.

The south-east and north-west sides of the main building are joined to the neighbouring properties at Nos. 53–55 and 47–49 Main Street. To the south-west, a two-storey smooth-rendered painted rear return steps down to a single storey. The south-east elevation of this rear return has an irregular fenestration pattern of various sizes and styles of timber casement windows, a doorway at first floor level accessed via a set of stone steps shared with the adjoining property, and a doorway at ground floor level leading directly into the main bar.

To the rear of the property, forming the western boundary, stands a single-storey rubble stone outbuilding with a whitewashed finish and a slate roof. This is one of a pair — the outbuilding to the rear of No. 53 has a corrugated metal roof. The rear outbuilding retains a remnant of the original boundary or party wall between No. 51 and its immediate neighbour No. 53, and has painted boarded timber doors. Full access to the rear was not possible at the time of survey.

The building was first depicted on the Townland Valuation Town Plan of around 1834. The Townland Valuation of 1835 described it as a first-class dwelling and shop — meaning a new or nearly new slated building — measuring 22.6 feet by 28 feet and standing 20 feet in height, initially occupied by a Mr William Mitchell and valued at £5 and 18 shillings. The property sits within the context of the early 19th-century reconstruction of Bushmills village, which was extensively rebuilt in the 1820s by the MacNaghten family of Bushmills House, who had acquired the estate in 1787.

By Griffith's Valuation of 1859, the building's value had risen to £12 and it was leased from the MacNaghten estate to Daniel Anderson, a local publican who established a public house on the site and remained there until his death in 1875. Subsequent occupants included a Mr Robert Gilpin, and the property continued to change hands over the following decades. By the 1911 Census of Ireland, the building was occupied by a Ms Jane Campbell and described as a second-class public house consisting of eight inhabited rooms, with two stables and a fowl house as its sole outbuildings. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1902 had recorded the property in its current layout, with a rectangular outbuilding to the rear.

The property was subsequently purchased outright from the MacNaghten estate, and by the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland the public house was valued at £22. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the pub — by then known as the Scotch House — was occupied by a Mr John Cochrane and had been further raised in value to £51. A 1972 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide to North Antrim described the buildings along Main Street in general terms as forming "a well-scaled street," noting that while no individual building apart from the former Courthouse was worthy of particular mention, "the unity of the street frontages must be maintained."

No. 51 was listed in 1980 and subsequently included within the Bushmills Conservation Area, designated in 1992 to preserve the built heritage of the village, which holds the highest concentration of listed buildings in the north-east of Northern Ireland. Around 1996 the building underwent extensive renovation, including replacement of defective window frames, installation of a new shop front, and the addition of the two-storey rear return to the south-west, which provided new kitchen and toilet facilities and additional living accommodation on the first floor.

The building is set within a terrace row on the west side of Main Street, which runs parallel with the Bush River to the west, with views south towards the Market Square. It has architectural interest for its style, proportion, and ornamentation, though some alterations are noted as detracting from the building. It also holds historical interest for its age, relative authenticity, historic importance, and local, social, cultural, and economic significance, as well as contributing to the group value of Main Street's terrace frontage.