9 Kingsgate Street, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52 1LB

9 Kingsgate Street is a red-brick, two-bay, three-storey mid-terrace building on the south side of Kingsgate Street in Coleraine town centre. Originally a dwelling, it is now in commercial use. The building pre-dates 1830 and is square on plan. It was delisted in September 2015, having been listed since 1977.

The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with blue/black angled ridge tiles and served by cast-iron half-round rainwater goods on brackets. A red-brick chimneystack with a moulded cap rises above the roofline. The upper floors are faced in Flemish-bonded red brick, while the ground floor is finished in smooth painted render. Windows are replacement timber sash with horns and projecting concrete sills — 6/3 pane to the second floor and 6/6 pane to the first floor — while the ground floor has modern plate glass shop windows.

The principal elevation faces north and is three openings wide at upper-floor level. At ground floor, a modern shopfront incorporates tripartite plate glass windows set on a painted smooth rendered stall riser with two large moulded panels, with a large modern timber entrance door at the left. Between the first-floor windows, an Ulster History Circle plaque reads: "HUGH THOMSON / 1860–1920 / Artist and / Illustrator / was born here." The east elevation abuts an adjoining building, as does the west elevation. The south (rear) elevation was not viewed at the time of survey.

The building was substantially reconstructed behind the front elevation in the 1990s, with the loss of much historic fabric and detailing. A Georgian doorway and fanlight was replaced in the same style during this work but has since been obscured by signage. Little of architectural or historic interest now remains apart from the upper floors of the front elevation. Its group value has been further eroded by the demolition of numbers 1 to 3 Kingsgate Street.

The building stands on a site with a layered and well-documented history. Kingsgate Street itself marks the position of a former gateway to the plantation town of Coleraine. Earthen ramparts surrounded by a ditch were constructed at the time of plantation in 1611, and by 1622 the former East Gate had been fitted with a small gate and drawbridge twelve feet wide, with a small timber slated room above. By 1710 the town gates had been dismantled, though the ramparts in the Kingsgate area remained standing for some years thereafter.

In 1738 a holding of seventeen perches in the Kingsgate area was appropriated for a school funded by the Irish Society. This holding was described as bounded to the west by the rampart and, according to local historian Reverend T H Mullin, was situated at the point where the road widens in Kingsgate Street — equivalent today to numbers 9 to 11. The school was reported to be in ruins by 1814, and it is not clear whether any of its fabric was retained in the buildings subsequently erected on the site.

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 been built over by numbers 1, 3, 5 and 7. The Townland Valuation of 1828 to 1840 records numbers 9 to 11 as an auction house occupied by Michael Doherty, auctioneer, and valued at £16. The building at that time measured 40 feet by 24.5 feet and stood 17.5 feet high — measurements suggesting it was lower than its neighbours in the 1830s. It had a double-height porch projection to the front, and the rear yard contained a kitchen, pantry, privy, piggery, and a single-storey schoolroom with a return, which may have been the Irish Society school built around 1738.

By the time of Griffith's Valuation of 1856 to 1864, the building had been divided into two and stood three storeys high, indicating it had been raised or rebuilt since the Townland Valuation. Number 9 had been taken over by Jane Smith and was valued at £20 with a £20 rent payable. In the mid-19th century it was described as a private house in good repair, though not in a very desirable situation.

The house bears a plaque to Hugh Thomson, artist and illustrator, who was born there on 1 June 1860, the son of John Thomson, a tea merchant. The Thomson family does not appear in valuation records for the period and were perhaps lodgers rather than occupiers. Thomson's talent for illustration was first noticed when he designed a commemorative address for his headmaster, and he subsequently became an apprentice at Marcus Ward & Co in Belfast. He later moved to London, where he illustrated over seventy books, including The Vicar of Wakefield and Cranford, and exhibited on numerous occasions, including a joint exhibition with Kate Greenaway at the Fine Art Society in 1887. A complete set of his illustrated books is held by the Ulster Museum, along with a number of his watercolours and drawings.

In 1863 the house was taken over by Reverend A B Irvine, Curate of Coleraine Parish Church, followed by James Maclean in 1872 and the Misses Maclean in 1927. James Maclean ran the premises as a grocery shop and is recorded in the 1911 census as resident with his wife and two daughters, one of whom worked as an assistant in the shop. The family also provided lodgings for three boarders — a dressmaker, a draper's apprentice, and a twelve-year-old girl still at school. The six-room house was designated first class. By the 1930s, the accommodation comprised a basement kitchen, a shop and pantry on the ground floor, two reception rooms and a water closet on the first floor, and three bedrooms on the second floor, with a return and outbuildings in the rear yard.

The building is street-fronted and forms part of a terrace of commercial units on the south side of Kingsgate Street. There is an enclosed yard to the rear.