The Sweet Shop, 19 Mill Street, Cushendall, Co.Antrim

The Sweet Shop, 19 Mill Street, Cushendall, County Antrim

This is a terraced, single-bay, three-storey rendered house built in the early 19th century, most likely around 1834, forming part of a continuous terrace lining the north-west side of Mill Street within the Cushendall Conservation Area. It is rectangular in plan and faces southeast. The building has group value with the adjoining No. 17 Mill Street, with which it was originally constructed as a single property before being subdivided in 1891.

Exterior and Materials

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate, with terracotta ridge tiles, a modern skylight of the Velux type to the front pitch, and cast-iron guttering on drive-through brackets. A shared rendered chimneystack with black clay pots sits on the south-west party wall. The external walling is painted in a ruled-and-lined rendered finish.

Window openings are square-headed with painted masonry sills and replacement timber sliding sash windows fitted with ogee horns and exposed sash boxes. On the three-storey single-bay front elevation, the second floor has a 4/8 timber sliding sash window and the first floor an 8/8 timber sliding sash window.

The ground floor features a stucco shopfront, reputedly added in the early 20th century. This comprises a former shop display window with paired 6/6 replacement timber sliding sash windows set on a single concrete sill, and a square-headed door opening to the right containing a four-panelled timber door with bolection mouldings and a rectangular overlight. The entire shopfront is framed by fluted stucco pilasters surmounted by a plain fascia and hood cornice.

The rear elevation has roughcast rendered walling with square-headed openings containing replacement timber sliding sash windows — 3/6 to the second floor and 6/6 to the first floor — along with a square-headed door opening incorporating a window opening to the right, fitted with a replacement sheeted and glazed timber door and a 4/8 timber sliding sash window. The south-west side abuts No. 21 Mill Street and the north-east side abuts No. 17 Mill Street.

Interior

The building is now used as self-catering accommodation. Although altered, the original internal plan form remains recognisable.

Historical Background

No. 19 Mill Street was built as part of a broader programme of development in Cushendall undertaken in the first half of the 19th century by the Turnly family, the local landowners. Francis Turnly, Cushendall's proprietor, had travelled to China in 1796 where he accumulated a fortune of around £75,000. In 1801 he used this money to purchase the estate of Newtownglens from the Richardson family for £24,000, subsequently renaming the settlement Cushendall. Described by architectural historian C. E. B. Brett as an eccentric character who "effected extraordinary improvements in buildings and roads on his property," Turnly transformed what had been little more than a cluster of cabins, a mill and a bridge into a coastal resort, erecting hotels — such as the Glens of Antrim on Shore Street — and numerous commercial properties to serve the growing number of tourists passing through on their way to the Giant's Causeway.

Nos. 17–19 Mill Street are likely to date from as early as the Townland Valuations of 1834, though specific identification in that source is difficult due to the loss of the accompanying town plan. The building is first recorded with certainty on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1857 and in Griffith's Valuation of 1859, which notes that Nos. 17–19 were originally built as a single structure valued at £11, used as a lodging house and owned by Alexander McDermott, a local landlord residing in the townland of Falmacrilly.

The building ceased to function as a lodging house in 1864 when ownership passed to the McDonnell family of Kilmore House. It was subsequently leased as a private dwelling, with a Ms. Mary Reeny recorded as the first occupant. Ownership passed briefly to a Mr. Robert Hugh Orr in 1880, before Joseph McCollum, a local publican at No. 23 Mill Street, purchased the property outright in 1888. The Blaney family occupied the single dwelling from 1869 until 1891, when the Annual Revisions record that McCollum subdivided the building into two separate dwellings, each valued at £6 and 10 shillings. Despite this division, the 1911 Census continued to record Nos. 17–19 as a single property, occupied by Matilda McCollum, a local seamstress and dressmaker. The census building return described it as a second-class dwelling containing a drapery shop on the ground floor at No. 19, five inhabited rooms, and a piggery as its sole outbuilding.

Matilda McCollum remained at No. 19 until her death in 1925, after which the property fell vacant for a period. Tenants changed frequently from the 1930s onwards until 1952, when Ms. Kathleen McCaughey occupied the address, remaining there until at least the 1970s. Ownership passed to William Blaney, a retired gardener, in 1950. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value was increased to £7, rising further to £19 shillings by the close of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), by which time the building remained in Blaney family ownership.

In 1972 the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide to the Glens of Antrim described Nos. 9–23 Mill Street as "a long terrace of three-storey rendered houses with quoins, all with similar proportions and detailing, but most rather dreary … the shops in the terrace have simple fascias." The same guide described Mill Street more broadly as "an outstandingly good street by Ulster standards; there is almost nothing to jar the eye … this street demands, and deserves, the most careful and sensitive consideration of any change of any kind." The buildings along Mill Street were included in the Cushendall Conservation Area in 1975 — only the second conservation area in the province to be designated at that time — and that year the village was also selected as one of four pilot schemes for conservation in Northern Ireland during European Architectural Heritage Year. No. 19 Mill Street was listed in 1976.

Around 1994 the building underwent extensive renovation, including reslating of the roof in second-hand slates, the addition of cast-iron rainwater goods, and the installation of a new front door and new sliding sash windows matched to the originals.

Setting

No. 19 forms an important part of a coherent row of buildings on Mill Street. Together, the brightly painted terrace of domestically scaled structures adds significant character to the Cushendall Conservation Area and gives the village centre its intact and distinctive appearance.