Former Post Office, 12 Causeway Street, Portrush, Co. Antrim, BT56 8AJ

Former Post Office, now Library, 12 Causeway Street, Portrush

This is a three-storey, five-bay former Post Office built in 1907 to designs by Robert Cochrane, a County Down-born architect who served as surveyor to the Board of Works in Dublin from 1887 to 1909. The building, which bears the date 1908 on its fabric, is an eclectic Edwardian free-style composition in red brick and sandstone, situated on the west side of Causeway Street in the commercial centre of Portrush. It is a good example of an Edwardian civic building, with quality detailing and stonework that reflects the town's prosperity at the turn of the twentieth century. Despite a change of use and interior refurbishment, the architectural detailing is largely intact and much of the original character has been preserved.

Architectural Description

The building is rectangular on plan, with a single-storey return to the rear and a large modern extension beyond that, which is of little architectural interest. The roof is hipped and clad in natural slate, with terracotta ridge tiles and red-brick chimneystacks finished with moulded sandstone caps. A shaped parapet runs along the roofline with sandstone coping. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods are fixed to projecting timber eaves with exposed rafter tails.

The walling alternates courses of stretcher and header-bonded red brick with sandstone dressings to the upper floors, while the ground floor is faced in ashlar sandstone with band rustication. A modillioned cornice runs above the second-floor windows, and a continuous sill course runs across the ground-floor windows.

All windows are six-over-six timber-framed sliding sash with horns and projecting sandstone sills. The ground- and first-floor windows have recessed ashlar reveals and advanced voussoirs, with exaggerated staged keystones to the ground floor. The second-floor windows have plain ashlar architraves.

Principal Elevation

The principal elevation faces northwest onto Causeway Street and is symmetrically arranged. A recessed central bay, three openings wide on each floor, is flanked by two advanced bays, each two openings wide and broadly identical to one another, save for the entrance door positioned on the left-hand side.

The central bay carries neo-Baroque detailing. Its entrance door is a replacement segmental-headed door. Above it at first-floor level, the central window is pedimented and decorated with console brackets and carved detailing. The apron panels to the first-floor windows interlock with the keystones of the windows below. The central apron is carved with the royal cipher "E/R" to either side of a crown, and the rusticated banding beneath is carved with the words "POST OFFICE". The apron panels to either side of the centre are carved with festoons. The side bays are dominated by a heavy cornice above the first floor, with plain aprons to the first-floor windows and cartouches to either side above the second-floor windows.

The entrance door on the left of the façade is original: a raised-and-fielded six-panel timber door with a peephole, cast-iron knocker and cast-iron knob. It is surmounted by a three-pane transom light and a keyblock above. This door provided separate access to the postmistress's accommodation on the upper floors.

Other Elevations

The southeast elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The southwest rear elevation has five evenly spaced windows to the upper floors, is abutted on the left by the single-storey return, and has a timber-sheeted door with a three-pane transom light and a window at ground-floor right. The return has four multi-paned segmental-headed windows and modern timber-sheeted fire doors to its southeast elevation, and is abutted to the southwest by the modern rear extension. The northeast elevation has a window to the second and first floors on the right-hand side.

Setting

The building is street-fronted at the northern end of Causeway Street within the commercial area, forming part of a terrace that is fairly inconsistent in style and character. Directly to the northwest is a four-storey modern building with apartments over commercial units. To the rear is an enclosed yard accessed from Causeway Street through a gate in the northwest wall.

Historical Context

Portrush underwent its most significant growth during the closing decades of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century, and still retains the character of a late Victorian and Edwardian seaside resort. The construction of a new and larger post office was driven both by the general growth of the town and, it is thought, by the large volume of mail orders once handled by the local department store, the "White House", which advertised itself as "The Depot for Irish Peasant Industries."

Tenders were invited in June 1907 and the Irish Builder reported the building's completion in May 1908. The total cost was between five and six thousand pounds, and the contractor was Mr Hutchinson Keith of Glenravel Street, Belfast. The supervising architect was William Williams of the Board of Works. Robert Cochrane, who designed the building, was also a noted antiquarian and was appointed Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Ireland in 1899.

The building entered valuation records in 1909 as a post office, postmaster's apartments and yard, valued at £100 for the post office and £30 for the apartments. Valuation records describe a T-shaped plan, with the post office occupying the ground floor and the postmistress's accommodation on the first and second floors. The 1911 census records the resident as Joanna Williamson Percy, the postmistress for Portrush, who was living there with her widowed sister.

The building continued in use as a post office until the 1980s. It was bought in 1984 by Moores of Coleraine, the owners of "The White House", who used the premises as a gift shop. Some repair work was carried out to the windows, chimney and roof during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1998 the building was taken over by Portrush Community Development Group, who undertook a complete restoration with funding from the International Fund for Ireland, Coleraine Borough Council, the Department of the Environment, a loan from Ulster Garden Villages, and £50,000 raised from the local community. The restored and extended building opened as a library in 2001, with an arts centre in the new rear extension and the upper-floor accommodation converted into holiday apartments.

The architectural historian W. D. Girvan described the former Post Office as a "brashly effective building in Wren-revival style" with "liquorice-all-sort bands of brick and stone."