54-56 Harbour Road, Carnlough, Ballymena, Co Antrim, BT44 0EU

A two-storey three-bay house with rendered walls and slated roof, forming part of a terrace of six houses at Carnlough. The building appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1857, and a photograph from the 1870s shows it already in use partly as a shop-front.

The front elevation faces east onto the pavement with direct views across the main road to the harbour. The roof is laid with Bangor blue slates in regular courses, with smooth rendered chimneys at each end of the ridge and two flush rooflights (modern insertions). The wall is roughcast using pebbles, with black-painted quoins to the extremities, cast iron guttering and downpipes.

The first floor contains three windows set in raised cement surrounds. These are timber sliding sashes, vertically hung with 6 over 6 panes and horns—replacements of the originals—with stone cills, painted.

The ground floor is occupied by paired shop-fronts. The left shop-front comprises a fixed three-light timber window with segmental headed transom lights on a concrete cill, set between panelled pilasters surmounted by a panelled frieze with dentil cornice. To its right is a new six-panelled wooden door with plain rectangular fanlight and segmental topped doorhead. The right shop-front has a central recessed door flanked by two-light windows, with similar pilaster detailing but ornamented with wooden paterae instead of dentils; the door is new, panelled and glazed with rectangular fanlight. Both shop-fronts and the front door are approximations rather than historically accurate restorations of the originals.

The rear elevation features a wall one storey high, extended forward from the original building line, with an asbestos slate roof sweeping down from the original ridge to meet it, and three flush roof lights (modern). The rear wall is smooth cement rendered. At centre are double timber panelled and glazed doors with small panes (new, 1986), flanked by rectangular four-pane timber casement windows with segmental heads to the top panes; the left window has translucent glass. Beyond each side are flat-roofed projecting blocks with rendered blockwork walls and asphalt roof covering, painted wooden fascia, and PVC guttering. To the right, a wooden flight of steps ascends to the roof of the right-hand block and leads to a monopitch bay projecting through the main roof with asbestos tile cladding.

A concrete paved area runs across the rear with steps up to a terraced yard with pink-tinted paving. The south boundary is formed by a whitened rubble wall of neighbouring buildings; the west boundary to High Street by timber hoarding on a concrete block base; the north boundary by an adjoining two-storey building whose wall is partly broken through and marked 'emergency exit', leading into a semi-derelict area with a ledged wooden door to the street. The rear of the building retains no original features of architectural interest or quality.