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

7 Kingsgate Street, Coleraine, is a modified two-bay three-storey terraced former dwelling, now commercial premises, pre-dating 1830 and located on the south side of Kingsgate Street in Coleraine town centre. It has been substantially refurbished with replacement window openings and a modern shopfront, and little historic detailing or character survives. The group value has been diminished by the demolition of numbers 1, 3 and 5 Kingsgate Street.

The building is square on plan with a two-storey return to the rear. It is topped with a pitched artificial slate roof with angled ridge tiles and a red-brick chimneystack. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods sit on projecting eaves. The walling is painted smooth render. Modern timber windows throughout feature plate glass to the ground floor shopfront. The principal elevation faces north and has a replacement window opening to the right at upper floors; the modern shopfront at ground floor displays plate glass windows and a modern metal door surmounted by a modern metal fascia. The east elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The west elevation is abutted by the adjoining building, which has been rebuilt. The south (rear) elevation was not viewed. The building is street-fronted and forms part of a terrace of commercial units on the south side of Kingsgate Street in Coleraine town centre, with an enclosed yard to the rear.

Kingsgate Street marks the position of a former gateway to the fortified town of Coleraine. Earthen ramparts surrounded by a ditch were 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 with a small timber room over it, slated. By 1710, 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, bounded on the west by the rampart at the point where the road widens in Kingsgate Street, equivalent today to numbers 9 to 11. 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.

Number 7 is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830. The Townland Valuation (1828–40) records a house and offices occupied by James Duncan and valued at £11 4 shillings. The valuation fieldbook gives measurements showing 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, and to the rear of number 7 was an outbuilding. At the time of Griffith's Valuation (1856–64), number 5 was a grocery concern occupied by William Lynn and valued at £13 with an annual rent paid of £14, described as a 'neat shop in good repair'. Measurements recorded in the fieldbook suggest that this building had remained unaltered from the previous survey in the 1830s. Subsequent occupiers included I Darragh (1873), William Abraham, tea merchant, general supplier, JP and Methodist circuit steward (1875), Martin Wilson (1879), Jane Darragh (1883), Martin Wilson and James Neill (1884), and John Sinclair (1926), who remained resident until at least the 1950s.

James Johnston Abraham, son of William Abraham and a surgeon and writer, was born in the house on 16 August 1876. J J Abraham qualified as a doctor and settled in London, where he published two works: The Surgeon's Log (1911), drawing on his experiences on a banana boat, and The Night Nurse (1913), which was made into a film in 1935. His later historical, biographical and autobiographical writings were collected under the pseudonym 'James Harpole' and republished between 1937 and 1953. Abraham was also a broadcaster during the Second World War and remained a consulting surgeon at Princess Beatrice Hospital after an ulcer ended his operating career. He died in 1963.

Valuer's notes of the 1930s give the ground floor accommodation as a shop and two store rooms, with a reception and kitchen on the first floor and two bedrooms on the second floor. The associated plan shows a substantial rear return which was rebuilt in the 1950s to give a store on the ground floor and an additional bedroom, scullery, bath and WC on the first floor. The building was listed in 1977, and by this time the fenestration to the front elevation had been altered to give a large window on the first and second floors and a replacement shopfront. Repairs and renovations were undertaken in 1979, in 1982 a kitchen extension was constructed, and in the late 1980s the rear yard was roofed over. The premises is currently in use as a shop and offices.