1-3 Bridge Street, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52 1DR

A three-storey attached building with attic, built around 1875 at 1-3 Bridge Street in Coleraine, facing south. The building is constructed with a stucco front in the Italianate style, which remains one of the more decorative facades in central Coleraine, though it has suffered significant loss of authentic historic detail through the removal of original windows, doors, and interior features over time.

The symmetrical front elevation is five bays wide, with outer bays forming shallow single-bay breakfront sections defined by rusticated quoins. Round-headed window openings feature moulded architraves with keystones rising from continuous moulded sill courses. Six blind windows and four glazed windows are arranged symmetrically across the front elevation. The ground floor has deep corbelling and vermiculated detailing, with a pair of round-headed windows to each breakfront and three square-headed openings to the centre, flanked by vermiculated piers with central roundels; these are now all boarded up. All current windows are replacement timber casements. The pitched slate roof has three slate-hung dormers to the front pitch, with rendered profiled chimneysstacks rising from both gable ends. UPVC guttering runs along decorative corbelled eaves. Plain render covers red brick on the remaining elevations. The west side elevation is cement rendered to the upper half, with the lower gable retaining materials from recent demolition of an adjoining building. The rear elevation is abutted by a four-storey rendered structure with pitched artificial slate roof. The east side elevation is abutted by an adjoining two-storey terrace of commercial buildings.

The building replaced two earlier dwelling houses on the site. It was commissioned by Stewart Hunter, a tea importer and grocer, who rebuilt both houses as a single warehouse with outbuildings and yard at a cost of £4,000, valued at £80 in 1875. The building first appears on the 1904 large-scale map, captioned with 'Bank' on part of the front section. In 1901 auctioneer James Ferguson Glenn took over the property, and in 1903 the Ulster Bank opened its first Coleraine branch here, subletting part of the ground floor and first-floor rooms while Glenn retained the remainder as an auction mart. The bank spent £400 on adaptations, principally fittings, but relocated to permanent premises in the Diamond in 1910. A valuer's plan shows the front was used as offices with a side door accessing the auction mart at the rear. After the bank's departure, ground-floor offices were let, including to James Kennedy. In 1920 Robert McDermott & Co, a shirt and collar manufacturing business, purchased the auction mart for £1,000, whilst William Dalzell, a shipping agent and coal merchant, leased a front office. Valuer's notes from the 1930s indicate the ground floor front was used as offices and the ground floor rear as engine room and packing department, with stock rooms and machinery rooms on the first floor and cutting and machinery rooms on the second floor, powered by a 15-horsepower Crossley engine. The shirt and collar factory continued until the late 1960s, after which the building passed to P O'Neill while the front became a local supermarket trading as 'Crazy Prices'. The building is currently vacant and lies in a derelict condition. It is abutted to the rear by a four-storey structure. Insufficient historic fabric remains for the building to be considered of special architectural and historic interest.