Site of former 34-38 Irish Street, Downpatrick, Co Down, BT30 6BP

Site of former 34-38 Irish Street

This site, on the sloping east side of Irish Street in Downpatrick, formerly occupied a two-storey terrace house dating to 1732, which was latterly subdivided into three properties. The building was demolished around 1991 and has since been replaced with new dwellings.

At the time of survey in March 1976, the property was described as a two-storey block of shops and houses. The roof was slated and the chimneys rendered. The rendered walls, lined and painted cream, featured bevel quoins and an eaves course. The south-west front, approximately 40 feet in length, displayed seven first-floor windows: two double-hung sashes with Georgian panes and five more recent top-hung casements, all with moulded architraves.

The ground floor comprised a shop front framed with three panelled pilasters, signboard, architrave, frieze and cornice, enclosing nine large Georgian panes with a panelled apron and flush panel door featuring a plain fanlight. A moulded panel sat above the shop front. Number 36 contained two recent glazed and panelled doors and a drop-hung window with Georgian panes, while No. 38 had two recent top-hung casement windows and a recent glazed and panelled door with a blocked fanlight. A recessed date panel at first-floor level between Nos. 36 and 38 bore the inscription "D.W.E 1732". The building was recorded as being in poor condition.

The site appears on town plans from 1708 onwards. By 1838, when the first valuation was carried out, the property had been divided into three houses, occupied by James Graham, Arthur Kelly and James Gibney. The 1859 Ordnance Survey plan does not indicate internal divisions but shows a carriage entrance where the shop front was located.

Irish Street is one of Downpatrick's oldest thoroughfares, running through the southern section of the medieval town. By the early 1700s, both the west side (within the medieval Irish Quarter) and the east side (in the Market House Quarter) were developed. At this stage, Irish Street was the most prosperous and impressive area of the town, home to much of Downpatrick's professional and merchant classes, with commercial activity centred on the late 17th-century market house at the northern end. During the 18th century, many properties were rebuilt on a grander, largely three-storey scale. By around 1800, the majority of buildings visible today had been erected, and the street retained its mid to late Georgian character throughout the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, partly due to Downpatrick's economic decline from around 1830 onwards and the shifting of commercial life to Market Street after 1845. The old market house was demolished in 1882 and replaced with an assembly room. In the 1980s and 1990s, a large section of largely 18th-century dwellings on the eastern side of the street was demolished and replaced with new neo-Georgian houses.