13 Mill St., Cushendall, Co.Antrim

13 Mill Street (now known as No. 15) is a terraced, two-bay, three-storey rendered house built in the 1820s to 1830s, possibly as early as 1834, on the north-west side of Mill Street in Cushendall, County Antrim. It forms part of a continuous terrace of similarly scaled early 19th-century buildings that line the street and give the centre of the village its intact and distinctive character. The building sits within the Cushendall Conservation Area and was listed in 1976.

The building is rectangular on plan, facing south-east, and shares party walls with No. 11 to the north-east and No. 15A to the south-west. The roof is pitched and covered in fibre cement tiles with terracotta ridge tiles, cast-iron guttering, and a shared rendered chimney stack on the north-east party wall. The front elevation is finished in ruled-and-lined cement render (unpainted) with rusticated rendered quoins to the right-hand side only. Window openings are square-headed with painted masonry sills. The second floor has 1-over-2 horizontally-glazed timber sliding sash windows with convex horns and exposed sash boxes; the first floor has 2-over-2 sliding timber sash windows with slender ogee horns and a continuous sill that is incorporated into the hood cornice of the shopfront below.

The ground floor is occupied by a traditional painted timber shopfront dating from around 1900. This comprises a six-pane square-headed timber-framed shop display window with a timber sill, and a recessed square-headed door opening fitted with a replacement timber six-panelled door with two glazed panels. The whole shopfront is framed by fluted stucco pilasters — though the console brackets are missing — and is surmounted by a plain rendered fascia and hood cornice.

The rear elevation is built in rubble red sandstone and incorporates a two-storey lean-to extension. A mix of single-pane and 2-over-2 sliding timber sash windows is visible to the rear. Despite the replacement fibre cement roof slates, the building retains much of its original character and materials, including the sliding sash windows and the rubblestone rear walling.

The building carries group value with No. 15A (HB05/02/005C), the two having been originally constructed and used as a single dwelling.

The historical background to this building is well documented. The majority of the two- and three-storey buildings along the north side of Mill Street were erected in the first half of the 19th century by the Turnly family, the local landowners. Francis Turnly, Cushendall's proprietor, had travelled to China in 1796 and accumulated a fortune of around £75,000. In 1801 he used this money to purchase the estate of Newtownglens from the Richardson family for £24,000, subsequently renaming the settlement Cushendall. At the time of purchase, the village consisted of little more than a number of insignificant cabins, a mill, and a bridge. However, as the number of tourists passing through the area on the way to the Giant's Causeway increased, Turnly — described by the architectural historian Brett as an eccentric character who "effected extraordinary improvements in buildings and roads on his property" — developed the village into a coastal resort, with the construction of hotels such as the Glens of Antrim on Shore Street and numerous commercial properties.

Nos. 15 and 15A Mill Street may date from as early as the Townland Valuations of 1834, though it is difficult to identify specific structures in that source due to the loss of the accompanying Townland Valuation Town Plan for Cushendall. The building was first recorded with certainty on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1857 and in Griffith's Valuation of 1859, which noted that Nos. 15 and 15A were originally a single building valued at £9 and 10 shillings, leased from the McDonnell family of Kilmore House to a Mr. John McKillop. Around 1865, McKillop purchased the property outright from the McDonnell family and in 1869 subdivided it into a pair of two-bay dwellings, each valued at £5 and 15 shillings. The newly created No. 15 was occupied by Rose Anne McKillop from 1869. Ownership of both dwellings briefly passed to a Mr. Robert Hugh Orr in 1880, but in 1888 Joseph McCollum, a local publican residing at No. 23 Mill Street, purchased Nos. 15 and 15A outright; the McCollum family continued to own the houses until at least the 1970s.

The Census of Ireland indicates that Nos. 15 and 15A had been recombined into a single property by 1901, at which time the building continued to be occupied by Rose Anne McKillop, who operated a drapery shop from the premises — the shopfront to the ground floor of No. 15 dates from this period. The 1901 census building return described the combined property as a first-class dwelling consisting of nine rooms, with a stable and cow house to the rear yard. The building appears to have been subdivided again into two separate properties by the 1930s. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the shop and dwelling at No. 15 was valued at £11. The valuers noted that the McCollums leased the address to a Mr. Robert Thompson between 1937 and 1955, before reoccupying it themselves. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the value of the building stood at £19, with the McCollum family still recorded as occupants.

In 1972, the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society's Guide for the Glens of Antrim described Nos. 9–23 Mill Street as "a long terrace of three-storey rendered houses with quoins, all with similar proportions and detailing, but most rather dreary … the shops in the terrace have simple fascias," while describing Mill Street in general terms as "an outstandingly good street by Ulster standards; there is almost nothing to jar the eye … this street demands, and deserves, the most careful and sensitive consideration of any change of any kind." The buildings along Mill Street were included in the Cushendall Conservation Area in 1975 — only the second conservation area to have been designated in the province — a designation described as "testimony itself to the special qualities of the village." In that same year, the village was chosen as one of Northern Ireland's four pilot schemes for conservation during the European Architectural Heritage Year.