91 Main Street, Bushmills, Co Antrim BT57 8QB

91 Main Street is a two-storey, two-bay, painted rendered mid-terrace house built prior to 1834, forming part of the early 19th-century reconstruction of the village of Bushmills by the MacNaghten family of Bushmills House, who had acquired the estate in 1787. It sits on the west side of Main Street, on the south side of the village centre, with the Bush River running to the west and views northward towards the Market Square. The house is listed within the Bushmills Conservation Area, designated in 1992 to preserve the built heritage of a village that holds the highest concentration of listed buildings in the north-east of Northern Ireland.

The building was originally constructed together with its neighbour No. 89 Main Street as a single two-storey, four-bay dwelling. The two properties were subdivided into their current form as a pair of two-bay houses in around 1890, though both retain their original domestic proportions to the street frontage. The architect is unknown.

The principal elevation faces north-east and is of painted rendered finish, two bays wide on both ground and first floor. At ground floor level, a single entrance doorway fitted with a vertically sheeted timber stable-style door sits to the left, with a single 6-over-6 timber sliding sash window with exposed box frame to its right. The first floor has two 6-over-6 timber sliding sash windows with exposed box frames, the left-hand bay aligned directly above the ground-floor window. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, and there are rendered chimney stacks to the south-east and north-west sides. Half-round painted cast-iron guttering to the front elevation discharges to a cast-iron circular downpipe.

To the rear, the south-west elevation is abutted by a two-storey pebble-dashed rendered rear extension with a fibre cement pitched roof. The rear walling of the main building is of rough-cast render, and all rear windows are uPVC casements. Rainwater goods to the rear are also uPVC. Access to the rear was limited at the time of survey.

The south-east and north-west sides of the building adjoin neighbouring properties No. 93 and No. 89 Main Street respectively.

The house is well documented historically. The Townland Valuation Town Plan of around 1834 depicts Nos. 89–91 Main Street as a single rectangular building with a large outbuilding to the rear. The Townland Valuations of 1835 record the property as a Class 1A building — meaning new or nearly new — measuring 31.6 feet by 23 feet and standing 16 feet in height, with a store and stable to the rear. At that time it was occupied by a Mr. Robert Taylor, who used it as both a private dwelling and a shop, and it was valued at £7 and 6 shillings. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1859, the value had increased slightly to £8, and the building was leased by Hugh Lecky to a Mr. Alexander Kane. Occupants changed with some frequency over the following four decades.

Following the subdivision of the property around 1890, No. 91 was assessed at a rateable value of £4 and 10 shillings and was leased by Hugh Lecky to Daniel McMullan, a local carrier. The 1911 Census of Ireland records McMullan at the address with his wife Mary, and describes the house as a second-class dwelling of four rooms, with two stables, a barn and a shed among its out-offices. The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1902 shows the house as a single terraced structure with a small outbuilding to the rear.

Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the value was raised to £8 and 15 shillings, with the building recorded as occupied by William Henry McMullan, a local haulage contractor. McMullan remained at the address until his death in 1961, when he left the property to Jane Cochrane, occupant of the adjoining No. 89 Main Street. The Second General Revaluation (1956–72) records that the Cochrane family purchased Nos. 89–91 outright in around 1963 and continued to reside there, operating a garage on the site, until at least the 1970s.

A 1972 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society guide described the buildings along Main Street in Bushmills in the following general terms: "A well-scaled street. Many good doorways and shopfronts remain, although there is the usual profusion of signs. While no building apart from the former Courthouse is worthy of individual mention, the unity of the street frontages must be maintained." Nos. 89–91 were listed together as a single property in 1980. An extensive renovation carried out in around 1987 included the installation of cast-iron rainwater goods to the front elevation and the replacement of sliding sash window frames to both dwellings. At the time of the most recent survey, Nos. 89 and 91 Main Street continued to be occupied as two separate dwellings.