13 Kingsgate St., Coleraine, Co.Londonderry

13 Kingsgate Street is a three-storey, two-bay terraced commercial premises built around 1830, situated on the south side of Kingsgate Street in Coleraine town centre. It forms a pair with the neighbouring building to its east, and together the two make an important contribution to the historic character of the Coleraine streetscape. The building is square on plan, with a large two-storey flat-roofed extension to the rear.

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate, with raised masonry verges and a rendered chimney stack to the gable. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods sit on projecting masonry eaves. The external walls are finished in painted ruled-and-lined render with quoins. At the upper floors, windows are 1/1-pane timber sliding sashes set in moulded architraves with keystones and projecting painted sills.

The principal elevation faces north. At ground floor level, an Edwardian Art Nouveau-style shopfront — installed in 1917 — dominates the facade. This features a recessed porch to the northwest corner flanked by plate glass windows on timber stall risers. The timber frame incorporates curved timber spandrels with carved decoration and multi-paned toplights. The porch has curved glazing on both sides of the entrance door and is floored with modern tiles. The entrance door has a single glazed panel and an original Art Nouveau-style brass pull handle, surmounted by a multi-paned fanlight. A modern fascia with scrolled consoles sits over a square column at the northwest corner. The east elevation is abutted by the adjoining building, and the south rear elevation is fully abutted by the large two-storey modern extension. The west elevation, within its exposed portion, has a window to the upper floors at the left and the shopfront at ground floor left, with the adjoining building abutting to the right.

The building fronts directly onto the street, adjoining an earlier terrace to the west, with an enclosed yard to the rear.

The site has a rich and well-documented history. Kingsgate Street marks the position of a former gateway to the fortified town of Coleraine, which was enclosed by earthen ramparts and a ditch constructed at the time of the plantation in 1611. By 1622 the East Gate — as it was then known — had been fitted with a small gate and drawbridge twelve feet wide, with a small timber room over it, slated. By 1710 the town gates had been dismantled, though the ramparts remained in the Kingsgate area for some years. By the time of 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 already been built over by numbers 1, 3, 5, and 7.

Number 13 originally formed a single dwelling house together with number 15. The Townland Valuation of 1828 to 1840 records the combined building as occupied by Alexander Cuthbert, who operated a tannery and leather cutting business on the premises. Cuthbert was a successful businessman who became a Town Commissioner in the 1840s and 1850s, and who carried on an international trade in iron, boots, linseed oil, and paint, with commercial links to Canada and Melbourne. By 1852 he had moved to a house called Northbrook, away from his tannery. The Townland Valuation valued the house and offices at £21 and listed a number of thatched and shingled stores and sheds to the rear.

By the time of Griffith's Valuation of 1856 to 1864, the building had been divided into two separate properties, revalued at £23 and £20 respectively. Number 13 was in use as the town's police barracks and had by then acquired a single-storey return, a single-storey rear extension, and a two-storey outbuilding. In 1861 the valuation was raised to £26 and then to £28, indicating further improvements or additions. At around the same time, the building was taken over by Robert Dunlop and then by Constantia Dunlop in 1873. A bakery was added to the site during this period and the valuation rose again to £33 10s. Subsequent occupiers included John Hammersley (1879), D. Henderson (1882), James Henderson (1883), Robert M. Reid (1884), and Robert Dysart (1891), though the building continued to be owned by Constantia Dunlop throughout.

By 1892 the property had been divided into several separate holdings: a house and shop at ground floor valued at £10, a house on the upper floors at £10, a bakery, outbuildings, and garden at £4 10s, with a further 10s for the garden alone, and additional outbuildings separately valued at £9. The 1911 census records two families in occupation: Alexander Thompson, a house painter, with his wife and four young children, and Edward Irwin, a mill owner, living with his two sisters, probably in the upper part of the building. By 1903 the bakery to the rear was no longer in operation and the buildings were used as stores.

In 1917 the entire building was taken over by butcher Daniel McGrath, who installed the new curved shopfront and carried out improvements at a cost of £350. The accommodation at that time comprised a shop, breakfast room, kitchen, pantry, drawing room, bedroom, bathroom and WC, and three rooms on the attic floor, with a slaughterhouse to the rear. Valuer's notes from the 1930s record several byres behind the shop: one byre with a loft over it used as a garage, three byres accommodating seven animals, one byre for ten animals, and a box used as a mincing room with a one-horsepower Crossley engine. The shop was described at that time as "exceptionally good for this part of the town." By the 1940s the shop and outbuildings were again let separately from the upper-floor offices, which were occupied successively by the Antrim Electricity Distribution Company Ltd and a series of other tenants.

The premises continued as a butcher's until the 1970s, when it became a clothing shop. Extensions and alterations were carried out in the 1980s. In the 1990s the building was entirely demolished and rebuilt in the style of the original, retaining the original 1917 shopfront.