19 High Street, Cushendall, Co. Antrim, BT44 0ND

19 High Street, Cushendall

No. 19 High Street is a two-storey single-bay end of terrace rendered house built around 1884. It stands on the steep northeast side of High Street in Cushendall, constructed as one of a pair with No. 17, forming part of a short terrace of four buildings that climb the hillside.

The building is rectangular on plan, facing southwest. It has a pitched fibre cement roof with synthetic ridge tiles and a rendered chimneystack with terracotta pots on the shared party wall with No. 17. The external walls are finished in flint dash with smooth cement rendered plinth course. The front elevation has a square-headed window opening with painted concrete sill and replacement timber casement window, alongside a square-headed door opening to the left containing a replacement vertically-sheeted timber door. The northwest gabled side elevation is blind. The rear elevation is rendered in smooth cement with replacement timber casement windows. uPVC guttering runs throughout. The southeast side abuts the adjoining house No. 17.

The property is set within a small front paved area enclosed by replacement steel railings on a low rendered plinth wall with a matching iron pedestrian gate.

Originally constructed as a modest dwelling valued at £3 per annum, the house was first recorded in the Annual Revisions of 1884. It was leased by Daniel Jamison, a local rate collector, to Daniel McVicker until 1889. The 1911 Census recorded it as a second-class dwelling with two inhabited rooms and outbuildings comprising a piggery and fowl house, occupied by William Skelton, a general labourer. Ownership changed hands several times until Sara McQuaig purchased the property outright from the Turnly estate in 1956, remaining resident into the 1970s.

The house forms part of the Cushendall Conservation Area, designated in 1975 as only the second conservation area in the province. The building was listed in 1976. However, all original external fabric has been replaced with inappropriate modern materials including uPVC windows and fibre cement roof coverings, leaving insufficient historic fabric for special architectural interest, though the building retains historic value as part of the original High Street terrace composition.