Exodus, 29 Railway Street, Lisburn, County Antrim, BT28 1XP

Detached three-storey former post office and library, built around 1900, now in use as a youth centre, situated on the west side of Railway Street at the corner of Wardsborough Road in Lisburn. The building is one of the more architecturally significant on Railway Street and has retained most of its external detailing and much of its internal fabric above ground floor level. The architect was J. W. Walby, who served as temporary clerk of works during construction. The building is within a conservation area.

EXTERIOR

The building is square on plan, facing east, with a double-height, multi-bay redbrick hall to the rear. The main roof is a double-pile hipped natural slate roof running perpendicular to the front elevation, with a central valley and roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles. This sits behind a shaped redbrick parapet wall rising from a stone and moulded redbrick cornice. There are pairs of redbrick chimneystacks with terracotta pots at either end of the roof, with cast-iron hoppers below the cornice and cast-iron downpipes to the side elevations.

The main walling is redbrick laid in Flemish bond, with sandstone ashlar to the ground floor of the front and south side elevations. Window openings are segmental-headed throughout, with sandstone sills and single-pane timber sash windows generally.

The three-storey front elevation is four windows wide. The decorative sandstone ashlar ground floor has three tall window openings, each glazed with nine fixed panes in a moulded timber frame with arched upper panes. These windows are flanked by sandstone pilasters resting on a continuous moulded sill to a raised sandstone ashlar plinth, with a lintel frieze and sandstone fascia above. The first-floor window openings have moulded redbrick surrounds resting on the sandstone cornice of the ground floor below.

The front entrance has a square-headed door opening with an original flat-panelled timber door featuring bolection mouldings and a sandstone architrave surround with a pulvinated frieze and segmental pediment. Above the door is a rectangular overlight with three arched timber frame panes. The door opens onto a single stone step to the street.

The south side elevation has the sandstone ashlar treatment returning from the front elevation, surmounted by a sandstone cornice. The remainder of this elevation is plain redbrick, with a single square-headed window opening to the second floor fitted with a 2-over-2 timber sash window.

The north side elevation is abutted by a slightly advanced chimney, with a single segmental-headed window opening to each floor. There is also a loading bay at second-floor level with an original timber glazed and panelled door.

The rear elevation is four windows wide, with square-headed openings, sandstone sills, and 2-over-2 timber sash windows. It is abutted by the double-height redbrick hall, which has a pitched natural slate roof and multi-pane steel windows with flush splayed stone sills to both its side elevations. This rear block was probably originally the post office sorting office.

SETTING

The building is street-fronted and corner-sited. To Wardsborough Road it is enclosed by a tall redbrick wall, and a short access lane to the north side elevation is enclosed by modern steel gates hung on a pair of tall redbrick piers.

HISTORY

Railway Street, formerly known as Jackson's Lane before the arrival of the railway in 1839, was gradually developed with municipal buildings and dwelling houses throughout the 19th century. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 shows a structure on the site, but the current building first appears on the third edition of around 1900. The building enters valuation records in 1894, recorded as divided into a lower part — a post office and yard valued at £60 and leased from William Reid — and an upper part valued at £15, serving as the residence of postmaster John Trousdell.

The Irish Builder of 1 August 1893 invited tenders for the post office, which was to be constructed by the Board of Works. J. W. Walby was employed as temporary clerk of works for both this building and the post office in Portadown. Walby was an architect and the son of James Walby, superintending engineer of the postal service first in Dublin and later in Belfast. J. W. Walby was born in Dublin and trained as a pupil of William Batt in Belfast, before settling in Portadown in the late 1890s and practising as an architect there until at least 1915.

The 1901 census records John Trousdell, aged sixty, originally from Limerick, as resident postmaster, living in the building with his County Antrim wife, two adult children, and a son working as a sorting clerk and telegraphist. By 1907 the valuation of the house had been absorbed into that of the post office, with the whole valued at £75. By 1910 the resident postmaster was William Croker of Waterford, who lived in the building with his wife and eleven-year-old son. Unusually, Croker declared himself as belonging to no church and refused further information to the census enumerator.

During the Second World War the post office was the scene of a fund-raising effort involving a genuine missile, as recalled by former Lisburn resident Desmond McConaghy: "The head post office at that time was in Railway Street, right next door to the Presbyterian Church. As one of the many efforts to promote and personalise the war effort a real bomb was placed on the floor near the counter. It would have been around 6 feet long from nose to finned tail, about 18 inches in diameter and black in colour. There might have been some choice message for Hitler painted on it! It was, of course, in a completely safe condition at this stage. The thought was that people could help to pay for the bomb by buying stamps specifically for that purpose. I have a vague recollection of stamps being stuck on it. I have no idea of the accounting process but that is how I recall it."

The building was in use as a library by 1975 and remained so until Lisburn's new library opened in Linenhall Street around 2000. It has since been taken over by a Christian organisation for use as a youth centre. As a former post office and library, the building holds significant social interest for the local community.