10 The Diamond, Ballycastle, Co Antrim, BT54 6AW

This is a mid-Victorian building with a later Victorian or Edwardian addition to the front, originally of no particular architectural or historic interest, and now lacking some of its original features. It is a three-bay, two-storey building containing two shopfronts.

The right-hand side has a single-storey, flat-roofed front return with a shop door featuring a fanlight above it, and two large-paned shop windows. In the centre of the building is a panelled door with a fanlight leading to the first-floor accommodation. The third bay has a shopfront with a segmental arch above the name fascia, painted with lettering, and below a shop door and window. All of this is framed by a moulded architrave. The first floor has three double-hung, sliding sash windows with 12 panes each, spaced widely apart. A half-round metal gutter runs along the roof, which is natural slate and gabled at one end, with a chimney stack and thin barge stones. The walls are smooth, rendered and painted, although currently in different colours for each shop. The gable wall and the flanking wall of the front return are windowless and smooth rendered, but unpainted. An iron gateway with an archway incorporating a fruiterer’s name leads to a laneway at the rear of the building. Number 10 fronts onto the Diamond, which has a wide paved area in front, and the fruiterer’s shop extends onto part of this paved area.

The precise date of the building is not recorded, but the main block first appears on an Ordnance Survey map of 1857, while the front projection is shown on a map from 1904. A photograph in the Lawrence Collection at the National Library of Ireland (reference number 10132) depicts the entrance façade of the front projection as having a triangular pediment above it.

Although construction dates are not confirmed, records suggest a possible date between 1740 and 1759. The building sits within the Town Parks townland and lies within a conservation area. It is privately owned and has historically served as a shop and part of a terrace.