61 Greencastle Street, Kilkeel, Newry, Co Down, BT34 4BH

61 Greencastle Street is the right-hand dwelling of a pair of single-storey, two-bay direct-entry thatched vernacular houses, among only a tiny number of surviving examples of this once common village house type in the Mourne area. Dating to at least the early 19th century, possibly older, the building stands directly on the south side of Greencastle Street with extensions at rear and side.

The main block has a traditional pitched thatch roof with wrap-over ridge, rendered verges, and wired eaves secured by two rods at the ridge and one at the eaves. Two smooth rendered chimneys serve the property: one rises from the right gable and the other from the party wall between the two houses. The walls are finished in wet cement dash. The front elevation presents a vertically sheeted door with a 1/1 sliding sash window to either side, both windows having concrete cills. The right gable is abutted by a single-storey extension with a flat parapeted roof and half-round gutters at the rear, rendered walls, and a blank street-facing elevation. The extension's end gable contains a two-pane painted timber casement window, and its rear elevation is blank.

At the rear, a short link block connects to an annex set parallel with the main house. The exposed section of the main block's rear elevation contains two 2/2 sliding sashes on the right, with the wall to the left remaining blank but retaining earlier roughcast whitewashed render. Part of the rear thatch slope has been cut away in preparation for a new link block, construction of which had not commenced at the time of survey. The annex has a shallow corrugated asbestos monopitch roof with half-round metal gutters and a small galvanised metal water tank at its right end. Its cement rendered walls feature a 2x3 metal-framed casement window on the right cheek, a glazed plywood door and casement window on the left wall, and two 1/1 sashes on the rear wall arranged around a chimney breast that rises high over the eaves and terminates in concrete blockwork. The annex roof timberwork is part original.

Historical records show that a structure of matching size and shape occupied this site from around 1835-38, but originally comprised three small separate dwellings rather than two. These three properties were exempt from rating due to their modest size, leaving no record of their dimensions or occupants. By 1862, all three had been combined into a single large property occupied by William Hanna, with the Earl of Kilmorey as lessor. Measurements given in that year's valuation record the house section as 14 yards by 5 yards 2 feet by 1 storey high, with associated offices measuring 5 yards 2 feet by 55 yards 2 feet by 1, 11 by 55 yards 2 feet by 1, and 3 by 45 yards 2 feet by 1, the last appearing to be a small addition to the northeast gable post-1838. Annotations to subsequent valuation maps show the three-property division was reinstated shortly after 1862 and persisted until at least 1929. Sometime after this, the block was reconfigured as two dwellings, the present Nos. 59 and 61.