9 Atlantic Avenue, Portrush, Co Antrim, BT55 7QB

9 Atlantic Avenue, Portrush, is a relatively small two-storey terrace shop, built around 1855–60, with a memorable Edwardian shopfront of 1909–10 featuring Art Nouveau style ceramic detailing. The building is externally largely original and represents a scarce example of mid-19th-century shopfront architecture in this setting.

The property faces Atlantic Avenue, a short street traversing the narrow peninsula on which Portrush town centre is located. Originally positioned within a continuous two-storey terrace, most of the terrace to the east has been demolished, leaving the building now semi-detached. To the rear is a slightly lower two-storey return. The plot originally belonged to a now-demolished property fronting Main Street (formerly no. 37), which was in place by 1853. Between 1853 and 1866, the remainder of the plot was developed to include the present shop.

The ground floor contains a full-width shopfront framed with decorative pilasters set on small projecting bases. Each pilaster has a tiled shaft with Art Nouveau style tiling and a decorative console bracket capital of moulded plaster, which forms stop ends to the fascia. The fascia tilts forward slightly and has a glazed surface protecting gilded shop-name lettering. The centrepiece displays decorative italicised lettering spelling 'Thomas Cameron' with decorative cartouches on either side containing the words 'Family' and 'Butcher' in serif capitals. To the left are paired timber glazed panelled doors with a boarded overlight. The large shop window sits on a low stall riser. The shop window and glazed door panels are boarded. On the first floor are two evenly spaced flat-headed window openings, each containing 2/2 timber sash frames with plain reveals and painted stone sills. A projecting sign of probable late 20th-century date is positioned between the windows. The exposed eastern gable and the eastern and south-facing gables of the return are blank.

The returns to numbers 9 and 11 are linked with a two-storey yard wall, with what appears to be a narrow landlocked yard between them. Roofs are slated with blue-black fireclay ridge tiles to the main roof and fibre cement slate to the return roof, with shallow projecting eaves courses to both. A cast-iron rooflight is positioned on the eastern side of the return roof. Rainwater goods remain on the front façade only and are galvanised metal. Walls are finished in render, ruled and lined to the front and plain elsewhere. Window frames and the shop window and fascia are timber.

From 1866 to around 1890, the building operated as a dispensary. In 1891 it was leased to Thomas Cameron, a butcher. In 1909–10, according to valuers' records, Cameron 'extensively decorated the shop…very handsomely', tiling 'the walls and floor' and installing a 'new window etc.'. The present shopfront, complete with fashionable Art Nouveau tiles, dates from this period. The shop remained in Cameron family ownership until its closure before 2007.