4-6 Railway Street, Lisburn, Co.Antrim, BT28 1XG

A mid-terrace three-storey rendered former house, built around 1830, situated on the east side of Railway Street in Lisburn. One of the earliest buildings on this street, it comprises the combined properties of numbers 4 and 6 Railway Street, and holds group value with the neighbouring numbers 8, 10, and 12 Railway Street.

The building dates from the late Georgian period and demonstrates the architectural quality of early nineteenth-century Lisburn. It features a pitched natural slate roof with clay ridge tiles, a shared rendered chimneystack to the south fitted with octagonal clay pots and replacement metal guttering. The walls are rendered and painted with ruled and lining decoration. The front elevation displays square-headed window openings, with original timber sash windows retaining cylinder glass on the second floor (6/3 configuration) and replacement top-hung timber casement windows on the first floor. The ground floor has been modified by the insertion of a recessed timber shopfront around 1980, which includes a terrazzo front area and lead-lined timber fascia spanning the entire elevation.

The north side elevation is abutted by the neighbouring building number 8, while the south side elevation adjoins number 2 Railway Street. The rear elevation, facing a small yard, is of rubble stone construction and is abutted by a gable-ended two-storey redbrick return. The rear features original timber sash windows with redbrick linings, some retaining cylinder glass. A redbrick wall encloses the rear yard, which has more recently been converted to a gravel car park accessed from Castle Street.

Historically, Railway Street was formerly known as Jackson's Lane before being renamed around 1840 with the arrival of the first railway line between Lisburn and Belfast. This building appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, though the Georgian design of this building and its neighbours suggests construction around 1830, which is supported by a town plan by Thomas Pattison dated circa 1830. At that time, numbers 4 to 12 Railway Street were the only buildings of the current terrace constructed along the road to the railway line.

From at least 1898 until the end of the Second World War, the ground floor was divided into two separate shops. In 1901, number 6 Railway Street housed a Temperance Hotel and connectionist shop operated by Mrs Margaret Armstrong. The 1911 census describes number 6 as a first-class shop comprising nine rooms with a slated roof, occupied by Margaret Armstrong and her daughter Evelyn. In 1910, number 4 was jointly occupied by a hairdresser operated by J. F. Armstrong and Johnson Brothers, a dyers shop. Both properties were owned by Sir James Musgrave, a local businessman and Justice of the Peace, who let number 6 to Margaret Armstrong from 1898 onwards. Following Armstrong's death, her daughter Evelyn continued to operate the hotel and shop until 1955, when declining post-war business forced closure. Evelyn lived in the upstairs rooms until her death in 1962. The ground floor was subsequently converted into a single shop, initially operating as a children's wear shop under Ms Jean Simpson until at least 1977. More recently it has been used as a cafe and restaurant, though this has since closed and the ground floor now stands vacant.

In 1969, architectural historian C. E. B. Brett described this building as part of a terrace of "good three-storey Georgian brick or stucco houses with glazing bars intact... the backs of [which] are of stone". Whilst the mid-twentieth-century shopfront detracts from the character of the building, the upper floors, rear elevation, and external materials remain substantially intact, preserving much of its original Georgian character.