16/18 High Street, Moneymore, Magherafelt, Co Londonderry, BT45 7PD

A mid-Victorian terrace house and shop built around 1870 by the Draper's Company to improve Moneymore's High Street in the Post Famine period. The building represents an interesting example of company-sponsored urban improvement, with designs probably prepared by William John Booth (though he had retired as company architect in 1855 and died in 1871). The houses were built by George Tipping and probably sold by the company around 1891 under Lord Ashbourne's Act (the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act 1885), which offered 100 per cent loan limits.

The building is a four-bay, two-storey structure arranged as a mid-terrace property. The south-facing High Street elevation displays a single segmental-headed, four-pane double-hung sash window on the ground floor. The principal feature is a fine four-panelled moulded framed house entrance door with a semi-circular arched fanlight, flanked by pilasters with neckscroll and cornice overhead. The moulded door panels have blocking pieces at each corner, a characteristic detail repeated on the adjacent house doors. The door frame has a deep-set reveal and good ironmongery.

The shopfront comprises a recessed door with a metal gate, a return display window, and a large display window with a small name fascia above. At first-floor level are four, four-pane double-hung sash windows, unevenly spaced with painted cills. The wall is smooth-rendered and painted, with quoins on one side, a bold plinth, and a frieze band beneath a corbel course supporting a half-round metal gutter. The roof is natural slate with a brick moulded chimney stack on the ridge between the gateway and shopfront.

The west-facing rear elevation is finished in plain cement render. A large carriage arch occupies the far left of the ground floor. To its right is a timber-sheeted door with rectangular fanlight, followed by a full-height projecting bay whose roof pitch merges with the main roof. The projection's ground floor contains a small window with a replacement top-hung frame (left) and a timber-sheeted door (right); to its right is a two-over-two timber sash window. The first floor features a six-over-six timber sash window to the far left, and replacement two-pane top-hung frames to the right and far right. The upper level of the projection has a small replacement-frame window to the left and a much larger elliptical-headed window with a two-over-two timber sash frame to the right.

To the rear of the yard stands a large two-storey outbuilding with whitewashed rubble stone walls, a slated gabled roof, and various-sized door and window openings on its east façade. This building is part of a long terrace of outbuildings serving this property and its neighbours. A pedestrian doorway leads into a small room which the occupant states was originally a cell. The current occupant reports that the main building originally served as the local Constabulary barracks.

The terrace replaced an earlier example designed by Jesse Gibson. The property was listed in 1975, and repairs were carried out in 1992.