Bell's Newsagency, 2-4 High Street, Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, BT38 7AF

Bell's Newsagency is a two-bay three-storey rendered Georgian building of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, constructed around 1800. Located on the north side of High Street at the corner of North Street in Carrickfergus, it was originally a house and is now in commercial use as a shop. The building forms part of the town's Conservation Area.

The structure is L-plan in layout, facing south with a full-height return to the rear. It has a hipped natural slate roof with blue and black angled ridge and hip tiles, and half-round cast-iron gutters. The walling is painted smooth rendered over a plinth, with V-jointed quoins, a banded cornice, and moulded stringcourses between floors.

The principal south elevation is two windows wide across each bay. Windows are square-headed painted timber 1/1 sashes with painted smooth rendered reveals, architraves and sills. The stringcourses have been removed, and a platband runs between the first and second floors. The entire ground floor has been substantially altered with a modern glazed shopfront and fascia, representing significant twentieth-century changes that have degraded the building's historic character.

The west elevation has three bays. The right two bays feature two windows per bay, except for blank ground floor walling in the left bay which has framed panels, and square-headed painted timber double doors with a blind overlight in the right bay. The first floor is occupied entirely by a framed panel; the second floor has one framed panel at the left end and two blocked bipartite windows with partially exposed painted timber upper sashes at the right end. All windows on this elevation are now blocked.

The rear north elevation is roughcast, with a single square-headed painted timber casement window on each floor at its exposed left end. The return to the north is abutted by the neighbouring property. The east return elevation is four windows wide, roughcast, and entirely blocked with concrete blocks. The building abuts the Dobbins Inn Hotel to the east and sits opposite the old Market House.

According to information from current tenants, the Bell family has owned the shop for over 150 years. The building served as a printing press in the early twentieth century. Tradition suggests it occupies the site of a former tower house, though no evidence has been found to support this claim. The building is recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832. The 1860 Griffith's Valuation records two separate properties on the plot: No. 2, extending into North Street and occupied by Robert Alexander, and No. 4, occupied by Dr David Taggart, a surgeon. By the turn of the twentieth century, the properties were unified under James Bell's occupation, leased from Carrickfergus Urban District Council. By 1928, David Bell occupied the house, while the second property was described in 1925 as a printing works.

The twentieth-century alterations, particularly to the ground floor, shopfront, and interior, have substantially degraded the building's interest as a late Georgian structure. It is recorded as a Conservation Area building only, with no individual listing designation.