Former Town Hall and clock tower, Harbour Road, Carnlough, Ballymena, Co Antrim, BT44 0EU

Former Town Hall and Clock Tower, Harbour Road, Carnlough

This mid-19th century building of distinctive style and proportions has unfortunately lost a number of its exterior features as well as all its original interiors.

The structure is a two-storey building of rectangular plan with a three-storey clock tower projecting forward at one end. The main entrance faces east. The entrance elevation is five windows wide, with a sixth window in the projecting tower at the left-hand extremity. The roof is covered with Bangor blue slates in regular courses, with a chimney at each end gable; the chimneys are smooth rendered. The walls are smooth rendered, lined and blocked, with a slightly projecting plinth and raised quoins to the extremities. Cast iron guttering and downpipes are present. Four circular iron tie bar cramps are set to the exterior at door head height.

Windows are rectangular timber sliding sash, 6 over 6 with horns, recessed in raised white limestone block dressings with chamfered reveals and splayed cills. The door in the second opening from the right is a rectangular panelled timber door set in a moulded wooden frame. The adjoining tower features similar walling with similar window and door surrounds, and has an oversailing crenellated parapet to the top. A ground floor window to the tower is now walled up and rendered, lined and blocked. Circular limestone block surrounds frame the clock faces on the front and right-hand side; the left-hand side facing south has only a painted imitation clock face in an ocular panel of smooth render. The south gable, visible above the adjoining former railway bridge, is rendered with pebble dash. The rear of the tower is smooth rendered, lined and blocked with smooth rendered raised quoining; a cast iron downpipe is present but broken.

The rear elevation of the main block is of limestone rubble, though half of it is later rendered. The roof is Bangor blue slates in regular courses. A square chimney stack to the rear is constructed in old brickwork with one original pot. Cast iron guttering is present. The north elevation's end gable of the main block is rendered with dry dash of mixed pebbles, with raised quoins to the left-hand extremity and a smooth cement strip to the right-hand extremity. One ground floor window to this elevation is a timber sash, set in smooth rendered reveals with a projecting sandstone cill that is fractured.

The building was constructed in 1855-56 by Frances Anne Vane, Marchioness of Londonderry, as a town hall, with the clock tower added later, as it appears without the tower on the Ordnance Survey map of 1857. The interior was destroyed in the 1970s and the building was refurbished in the 1980s for use as a public library.

The building stands in the main street of the village, facing the harbour, with a former railway bridge adjoining it at one end and the walkway of the former railway track permitting views over it at both front and rear. The plot to the rear is in very poor order. The building is located within Carnlough Conservation Area.