19-21 High Street, Moneymore, Magherafelt, Co Londonderry, BT45 7PA

A semi-detached redbrick house with shopfront, dating to the 1860s, located in Moneymore on the High Street. The building represents a significant example of 19th-century infill development, deliberately designed to respect the height and building line of the adjoining Market House and to harmonise its shopfront treatment accordingly.

The building stands three storeys tall, two bays wide, with a gabled roof of natural slate and a slated back return. The ground floor contains a shopfront with a central framed door with upper glazing panel and plain deep fanlight, flanked by large single-pane display windows with shallow horizontal panes above. Rendered and painted panels sit beneath the display window cills. The shopfront is framed by pilasters with a painted name fascia decorated with end scrolls, bottom and top mouldings, and scalloped lead flashing. A separate entrance door of six panels with three-pane fanlight and thin pilasters stands to the side. Two steps rise to both doors, and a low plinth runs beneath. Over the fascia a half-round metal gutter sits on a brick corbel, terminating against a corbelled brick kneeler with trunkhead and unpainted downpipe. A wall-fixed street lamp is positioned adjacent.

The first and second floors contain pairs of six-pane double-hung sliding sash windows with segmental heads, spaced to suit the semi-detached arrangement. Each sash is divided vertically into three sections. The first-floor windows match the fanlight design of the shopfront, though the shopfront fanlight has lost its glazing bars. Second-floor windows are similar but of lesser height. The walls are constructed in redbrick laid in Flemish bond with cut soldier courses over windows and natural-colour mortar. Sandstone cills are painted. The gable wall is windowless and roughcast rendered with a red brick chimney stack centred with six clay pots. A brick chimney stack with tall clay pots rises from the front roof.

The back return mirrors the design of the adjoining No. 15/17, with a two-storey lean-to roof, one bay long, followed by a single-storey section in line with a lean-to shed, and then two-storey stone-built outbuildings. A spine wall is shared with No. 15/17. The rear wall of the main house shows evidence of alteration: the former ground-floor window and door have been bricked up, whilst modern window frames have been inserted at first and second floors. The window above the lean-to roof remains unchanged. Back return windows are double-hung sliding sash types with two and four panes. Additional sheds occupy the narrow yard to the rear.

A gateway with square and round roughcast-rendered piers, positioned in line with the front wall, provides access.

Nos. 19/21 and 15/17 form a matching semi-detached pair aligned with the neo-classical terrace of the Market House, fronting onto a broad footwalk to the High Street, which was being relaid as part of an Environmental Improvement Scheme.

Historical Context

In 1862, a deputation of the Draper's Company visited Ireland and requested that builder Daniel Magee, who had previously undertaken work for the Drapers, prepare plans for houses on the High Street at the corner of the land leading to Hammond Road (Market Street corner). He was instructed to base his designs on houses designed by Booth on the opposite corner of the lane (the north side of Market Street). Magee ultimately followed his own design. Numbers 15/17 and 19/21 replaced earlier houses on the site. The back return was added later in the century, as it appears on the 1906 Ordnance Survey Map but not on earlier maps.

The shop has operated as a drapery since 1968. Prior to that it was a grocery owned by Devlin, and before that by Bradford. The building was listed in 1975. The shopfront underwent renovation in 1991 and other repairs were carried out at the same time.

The building lies within a conservation area.