24-25 The Diamond, Kilrea, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 5QJ

Former Mercers' Hotel, Kilrea

This is a former hotel, now used as a private residence with a public bar on the ground floor, built around 1835 and extensively remodelled and enlarged in 1892–93. It stands as the dominant building on the north-east corner of the central Diamond in Kilrea, County Londonderry. Designed by George Smith, architect to the Mercers' Company, it forms the most prominent element within the Diamond and represents the ambitious programme of architectural improvement the Mercers' Company pursued in Kilrea from the 1830s onward. Its external appearance has remained largely unchanged since the 1892–93 works, and much of the original interior layout and detailing survives intact.

Architectural Description

The building is asymmetrical, rendered, and rises three storeys with an attic over a basement across four bays. To the rear there is a three-storey double-pitched return. The plan is rectangular. The roof is pitched natural slate with angled blue-grey ridge tiles. There are two rendered chimney stacks with clay pots on the main roof, and two further stacks to the return. Cast iron ogee rainwater goods with rounded downpipes serve the overhanging eaves to the front; uPVC goods are used generally to the rear. The external walls are finished in ruled-and-lined render with a moulded eaves course and projecting plinth; the rear is roughcast render. Window openings are square-headed with rendered sills and are glazed generally with timber one-over-one sash windows; some timber casements appear to the rear.

The principal elevation faces east onto the Diamond and is four bays wide, with eight evenly spaced windows across the upper floors. To the attic, a wallhead dormer with a round-headed window sits offset above the left bay. The ground floor has three bipartite sash windows with timber mullions, and a plainly detailed pub front to the far right comprising a timber door with a plain glass transom and an adjoining window. Offset slightly left of centre is an advancing square-plan entrance porch with a timber double-leaf panelled door and radial fanlight. The porch is plainly detailed, with tall slender blind recesses flanking the door, plain impost banding, and a parapet raised over the doorway. The left and right cheeks of the porch are each lit by a narrow round-headed timber sash.

The north elevation is largely obscured by an adjoining building, with only two windows visible at attic level. The south elevation is detailed similarly to the north. The west (rear) elevation has a central window at attic level and windows to the upper floors on the right side; it is otherwise largely abutted by a slightly lower M-profile return with irregular fenestration. This return retains some original six-over-six sash windows; those to the north and south cheeks break the eaves and are set into gables. Various abutments at ground floor level, some crudely constructed, are of little architectural interest.

Setting

The main elevation fronts directly onto the central Diamond of Kilrea, within a historic urban setting. Modern buildings abut the north and south gables. To the rear, an expansive yard is bounded by a partially roughcast rubble wall to the north and east, and by buildings along Bridge Street to the south. A large outbuilding of stone rubble, brick, and slate construction, running north to south, divides the concrete yard. A timber sheeted-and-braced gate gives access to an alleyway leading south to Bridge Street. Three square ashlar sandstone piers with copings support a timber sheeted and metal gate from Bridge Street.

Historical Background

The hotel is first shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, with the town's market house abutting to the north and a range of outbuildings to the rear. The original building comprised three bays; a fourth bay was added to the south during the mid to late 19th century.

The site has deeper roots in the Plantation of Ulster, when the Worshipful Company of Mercers, a principal Livery Company of the City of London, was granted direct control over approximately 33.5 square miles of land in County Londonderry, centred on the districts of Kilrea and Movanagher. By the mid-17th century the Mercers' estate had been let to individual tenants, many of them absentee, and the estate fell into serious decline. On the death of the final tenant, Alexander Stewart, in 1831, the Mercers' Company resumed direct ownership and control. Kilrea became the capital of their proportion, and over the following decades the Company initiated an ambitious programme of improvements aimed at raising productivity, welfare, and the general appearance of the estate, with particular attention given to Kilrea town itself. Architects George Smith and William Barnes were appointed to the Company, and a cohesive design framework was produced that carefully regulated the style and proportions of all new buildings. The Company continued to manage the estate until it was sold to the tenants under the Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903.

The hotel replaced an earlier building on the same site, shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830, which had served as the residence of the former agent to the Mercers' Company and had been used as a temporary soldiers' barracks in 1798. A new residence, the Manor House on Bridge Street, was built in 1835 for the newly appointed agent, Mr Henry Holmes. Whether the earlier building on the hotel site was fully demolished or simply converted for hotel use remains unclear from the surviving accounts, though Samuel Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) states that a "spacious and commodious hotel" had been "recently erected by the Mercers' Company of London."

According to accounts in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1830–39, the Mercers' Hotel cost £800 to construct, entirely funded by the Company. The original building contained a traveller's room, parlour, kitchen, pantry, and scullery on the ground floor, with accommodation above described as "ample for seven gentlemen," comprising a combination of sitting rooms and bedrooms. At the time of construction, the hotel was one of only three buildings in the town rising higher than two storeys. The building also housed several institutional functions: an office for the agent of the magistrates, an office for the bailiff above, a room used by the Company's agent as a temporary dispensary until the new building on Church Street was completed, an office of the Presbyterian Church, and a library above that was run by the minister.

Griffith's Valuation of 1856 lists the hotel and offices at a rateable value of £37, with William Adcock recorded as proprietor. The associated outbuildings at that time included three stables, two newly extended out-offices, a coach-house, and a turf-house. The valuer noted of the hotel: "Only hotel in the town — it is clean and comfortable and I have no doubt does a fair share of business." Newly built additions were noted as housing "comfortable bedrooms."

The Annual Revisions confirm that the building continued in use as a hotel or inn under a succession of proprietors until 1880, when it was listed as a house, then fell vacant in 1892. It was re-established in 1894, and its rateable value rose significantly to £50, reflecting major works carried out in 1893: the building and outbuildings had been enlarged and extensively altered under a contract of £1,168 9s 6d, undertaken by A. Higgins and overseen by the architectural partnership of W. & M. Given. These extensions and outbuilding developments are illustrated on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905. James S. Curl noted in 1986 that the main building's appearance had by then remained almost unchanged since this work was carried out; field evidence confirms this remains true today.

By the First General Revaluation of 1935, the now licensed hotel was valued at £75, with James McLaughlin as proprietor and ownership having transferred to the Trustees of the Diocese of Derry. A number of the associated outbuildings were leased to tenants and operated as a combination of shops and dwellings. The hotel suffered damage during the 1970s and was subsequently restored, though the market house that had abutted it to the north was demolished at that time.