15-17 High Street, Moneymore, Magherafelt, Co Londonderry, BT45 7PA

15-17 High Street, Moneymore, is a Grade B2 listed semi-detached redbrick house with shopfront dating from the 1860s. It exemplifies 19th-century infill development that carefully respected the adjoining Market House in terms of height, building line, and shopfront design. The corner treatment into Market Street, with its stone-built boundary wall and gate piers, is particularly well executed.

The building is three storeys high, two bays wide, with a gabled slated roof and brick back return. The ground floor shopfront features a central framed door with upper glazed panels and a 3-pane fanlight above. Large display windows flank the door on each side, each divided into 6 panes with slim glazing membranes. Below each display window is a smooth rendered and painted panel. Thin pilasters frame the shop door and windows. A painted fascia with end scrolls, top cornice, and lower moulding sits above. Both the shop door and the separate 6-panelled grained door to the upper floors (which has a 3-pane fanlight with thin pilasters on each side and slim cornice) are accessed by 2 steps, with a low plinth running across. At first floor there are 2 six-pane double hung sliding sash windows with segmental heads, spaced to suit the semi-detached arrangement, with each sash divided vertically into 3 matching fanlights. The second floor has similar windows of lesser height positioned directly above. A half-round metal gutter sits on a brick corbel, terminating against a corbelled brick kneeler, with a trunk head beneath and an unpainted cast aluminium downpipe.

The walls are constructed in redbrick Flemish bond with cut soldier courses over the windows and natural-coloured mortar. Cills are sandstone, painted. The roof is natural slate with an upstand barge to the gable. A brick chimney stack with tall clay pots is positioned centrally. The gable wall is windowless, faced in Flemish bond brickwork of a slightly different red tone, with the stack centred and bearing 6 pots. A limestone boundary wall encloses the yard to Market Street, standing 1800mm high and built in white coursed stone with a pair of circular piers topped with conical finials and a pair of sheeted and framed timber gates.

The back return comprises a lean-to section beginning 2 storeys high and 1 bay long, which changes to a 1-storey section 3 bays long, and then to a random-built 2-storey outbuilding 3 bays long. The rear wall of the main house contains a single segmental-headed 6-pane double hung sliding sash window at each floor, not quite vertically aligned, and at second floor another similar window over the lean-to roof. A corbel course runs under the gutter, terminating against a brick kneeler. The upper portions of the gable and rear walls were repointed several decades ago. Windows to the back return are 2-pane double hung sliding sashes.

Numbers 15/17 and 19/21 form a matching semi-detached pair in line with the neo-classical terrace of the Market House, fronting onto a broad footwalk to High Street.

The building has significant historical interest. In 1862, a deputation of the Draper's Company visited Ireland, and Daniel Magee, the builder, was requested to prepare plans for houses on the High Street at the corner of Market Street. He was instructed to base his designs upon houses designed by Booth on the opposite corner of the lane (on the north side of Market Street), though Magee apparently followed his own design instead. Numbers 15/17 and 19/21 replaced earlier houses. The back return was added later in the 19th century, as it is shown on the 1906 Ordnance Survey map but not on the 1832 revised 1856 map. The shop, now operating as a newsagent, was formerly a chemist shop. The building was listed in 1975 during the occupancy of the present owner. Repairs were carried out in 1976, 1990, and 1998 with the aid of Northern Ireland Housing Executive grants. The building lies within a conservation area.