87 Main Street, Bushmills, Co.Antrim

87 Main Street is a two-storey, two-bay painted rendered mid-terrace building with a traditional-style timber shopfront, built prior to 1834 as part of the extensive rebuilding of Bushmills village in the early 19th century. It sits on the west side of Main Street, on the south side of the village centre, with views northward to the Market Square and the Bush River running parallel to the west. The building is listed and falls within the Bushmills Conservation Area, which was designated in 1992 to protect the built heritage of a village that holds the highest concentration of listed buildings in north-east Northern Ireland.

The building has a rectangular plan with a slated pitched roof finished in natural slate to the front elevation, black clay ridge tiles, and an unpainted rendered chimney stack to the north-west side. The front elevation is painted rendered, with half-round cast-iron guttering discharging to a circular cast-iron downpipe. The principal elevation faces north-east and is accessed via a paved footpath directly off Main Street. At ground floor level, the traditional-style timber shopfront has a single entrance doorway flanked by timber-panelled stall risers on either side. The two first-floor bays each contain 1/1 timber sliding sash windows with horns. The south-east and north-west elevations are party walls adjoined to neighbouring properties at nos. 83–85 and 89 Main Street. To the rear, the south-west elevation abuts a modern two-storey pebble-dashed rear return with a pitched roof, stepping down to a single-storey pebble-dashed extension; uPVC windows are fitted throughout the rear return, and access to the rear yard is via a modern vertically-sheeted timber door in the north wall of the single-storey extension. Roof coverings to the rear are fibre cement rather than natural slate, and rainwater goods throughout the rear are uPVC.

The building was first recorded on the Townland Valuation Town Plan of around 1834, which showed it as a terraced structure with a single outbuilding to the rear. The Townland Valuations of 1835 valued it at £3 16 shillings and recorded its first known occupant as a Mr Alexander Hartford; the valuer classified it as a 1A class dwelling, meaning a new or nearly new building. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1859 the value had changed to £5, and the property was leased from the MacNaghten estate — who had owned Bushmills House and acquired the estate in 1787, and who drove the village's early 19th-century rebuilding — to a Mr William McMullan, who remained there until his death around 1897. The Census of Ireland records that by 1911 the premises was occupied by a Ms Elizabeth Simpson, who ran a draper's shop from the building, which was by then described as a second-class dwelling containing four rooms. The draper's use continued to be shown on the Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1902. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), a Ms Sarah Simpson occupied the shop and dwelling, which was valued at £9 10 shillings. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the total rateable value stood at £18 10 shillings. The building was used as a dry-cleaning shop in the 1960s and was purchased outright from the MacNaghten estate around 1968 by a Mr Daniel Cochrane. It was listed in 1980.

A renovation carried out around 1988 included the construction of the two-storey rear return, the installation of the current shopfront, reslating of the roof in natural slate, the addition of cast-iron rainwater goods to the front elevation, and the fitting of new timber sliding sash window frames throughout. At the time of survey the building was in use as retail premises.

The 1972 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide to North Antrim described Main Street, Bushmills in general terms as "a well-scaled street" in which "many good doorways and shopfronts remain," noting that while no individual building other than the former Courthouse warranted separate mention, "the unity of the street frontages must be maintained." Despite the detraction of the pebble-dashed rear extension with uPVC windows, the building retains its original shopfront proportions and contributes positively to the character of its terraced village-centre setting.