30 Water St., Rostrevor, Co.Down

30 Water Street, Rostrevor, County Down

A one-and-a-half-storey house forming part of a picturesque terrace of three dwellings. The building appears to have been created around 1874, when valuation records indicate significant structural work or rebuilding of the site. It may incorporate fabric from earlier structures that occupied this location, though this remains uncertain.

The property's history can be traced from an Ordnance Survey map of 1834, which shows a building covering the combined sites of the present numbers 30 to 34. This was recorded in 1835 as a single-storey thatched house belonging to William Sarsfield, measuring 44 feet by 14½ feet by 7 feet in height, with associated outbuildings. By the revised Ordnance Survey map of 1860, the current terrace had appeared, though still recorded as not being new. The 1861 valuation describes the property as the home of Susan Connolly, held under lease from Lady Florence Balfour of nearby Fairy Hill, with a roof recorded as being in bad condition. The thatched roof and grading of "not new" suggest the terrace may have been created from the pre-1834 structure.

The condition of the house continued to deteriorate during the 1860s, with the rateable value falling from £1-15-0 in 1861 to £1-5-0 by 1865. However, in 1874, when Ellen Cunningham became tenant, the valuation of the whole terrace was increased and the property was raised to £2-5-0, coinciding with what appears to be the creation of the one-and-a-half-storey picturesque row visible today.

The house was occupied by a succession of tenants throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries, including James Patrick McEvoy (1883), John Dowd (1892), and the Cole family from 1894. The 1901 census records Annie Cole, a 36-year-old from Liverpool, living in the property with her two young sons, describing it as a second-class dwelling with two rooms in use. Subsequently occupied by Mary Johnston, Mary McGuinness, Thomas Acorn, Bridget McAllister, Annie Colgan, Annie Kane, Richard Farrell, Angela McCartan, and Richard Sloan (1951), the property became vacant around 1958 and appears to have remained so until at least 1972.

The building sits within Water Street, an L-shaped thoroughfare that first appears on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map with development similar to the present day. Though the Rostrevor Conservation booklet of 1979 identifies Water Street as the town's earliest place of settlement, it is not shown on any map prior to 1834. It is more likely that the Bridge Street–Mary Street crossroads formed the original nucleus of Rostrevor, with Water Street developing at the end of the 18th or beginning of the 19th century when Rostrevor began to develop as a popular resort for the gentry. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1836 refer to the street as "The Back Lane," describing it as running at right angles to the main street, a little above the church in a south-easterly direction to the Rostrevor or Kilbroney River. The street was 155 yards long and 300 feet broad, with houses and cottages noted as being in good order. The three good private houses mentioned in the memoirs as standing on the communication between the Back Lane and Post Office Street are still in place as numbers 31, 33, and 37.

The building is situated within a conservation area.