34 Catherine Street, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 9DB

34 Catherine Street is one of the best-preserved Georgian town houses in Limavady, significantly enhancing the architectural character of Catherine Street. It is part of an imposing group of four buildings and retains much of its original interior detail, notably featuring an unusual roof structure in both the main building and the coach house.

The building is a three-storey, three-bay brick terraced house built between 1820 and 1839, part of a group of four houses facing north-west onto Catherine Street. The ground floor has 16-pane sliding sash windows with painted stone cills and painted rendered jambs. The first floor contains slightly taller 16-pane sashes of similar detail. The second floor has smaller 12-pane sashes. A fanlit door to the south-west sits in a rendered concave recess, flanked by fluted Doric columns supported on unusual circular bosses. The entablature breaks forward from the door over the columns. The fanlight displays fine astragals in a cobweb pattern. Two curving concrete steps lead up to the door. Two small windows aligning with those above light the basement. The roof is natural slate with a rectangular-section cast iron downpipe. Brick chimneys with six pots each sit at either end of the ridge. To the rear, a wide slot allows a 12-pane sliding sash to light the basement. The rear elevation is three windows wide, with one set dropped to light the stair landings. The courtyard is flanked by walls of similar brick, though the wall facing Ulster Bank has recently been rebuilt.

The original two-storey coach house remains intact to the rear, featuring a segmental coach arch and three small windows with curving brick arches. It is also brick with a natural slate roof.

The building is part of a terrace with an 1828 plaque at one end and appears on the 1831 Ordnance Survey Map with a stable to the rear. The 1858 Griffiths Valuation lists the occupant as Mr George Proctor. According to the U A H S Buildings of North Derry, the building was formerly the Reformed Presbyterian Manse, though in 1858 Reverend Nathan McCc Brown was living two doors up at number 30, with Mr Frederick McCausland as the landlord of both properties. During the Second World War, the basement was used as a night club for the RAF, with murals on the walls that were discovered and subsequently removed during renovations. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it operated as Morelli's Presto Bar, when a large protruding oriel window with gaudy coloured glass panes replaced the ground floor windows. The next occupant, Mr Coyle, reinstated the original windows and used the building as a playschool. The present owners, who purchased the building in 1986, have completely renovated it, carefully replacing fittings in an appropriate manner where possible. The ground floor currently operates as medical consulting rooms, the first floor as offices, and the second floor as a flat.