McCann’s Bakery, Castle Street, Newry, Co Down, BT34 2BY

McCann's Bakery on Castle Street, Newry, is an extensive industrial complex of 19th and 20th century buildings wrapped around a mid-16th century castle. Of the six conjoining blocks that make up the site, only the castle is considered to be of architectural or historical interest. The complex stands on the east side of Castle Street in the townland of Ballinacraig, within a conservation area, and is also recorded as a monument.

The castle (Block 4) is the original structure at the heart of the site. It is three storeys high, aligned north to south, and is enveloped on all sides by later additions except at its uppermost floor. It has a hipped natural slate roof with skylights to the rear pitch and metal rainwater goods. All exposed walls are cement rendered, though an unrendered section now enclosed within an adjacent block reveals random rubble construction beneath, and the remaining walls are almost certainly built in the same way. The castle is now devoid of external openings except at the north end of its west façade, where a modern casement window opens onto the roof of a neighbouring block. The internal splaying of the walls around this opening suggests it may follow the line of an original aperture. Directly above it is a circular opening housing a ventilation fan. On the same elevation, just to the right of this window when viewed from the street, is a large moulded masonry corbel.

The five remaining blocks are as follows. Block 1, at the north end of the site, is a large single-storey building set at right angles to the road, with its gable facing directly onto Castle Street. This was the "new" bakery, opened in 1969. Its front section has a pitched corrugated asbestos-cement roof and harled cement walls; the rear section has a corrugated metal roof and smooth cement-rendered walls. The north gable has a large metal vehicular door in its canted left corner and a small window at ground floor right. The north elevation contains a number of modern windows and doors. At the road end of the driveway leading to the rear of the site is a pair of metal gates bearing the interlocking letters "A McC". A small relatively modern building and a Nissen hut abut the east gable. Block 1 is without architectural interest.

Block 2, alongside the south side of Block 1, is a three-storey, one-bay building also set at right angles to the road. This is a 19th century store taken over by the McCann Brothers in 1894 for use as a bakery and, apart from the castle, is the oldest part of the complex. It has a hipped slate roof and painted smooth cement-rendered walls with raised stepped quoins, and metal rainwater goods. The front elevation is three openings wide. At ground floor there is a central entrance flanked by two large modern windows, with the name "Arthur McCann Limited" painted in capital letters on the fascia above. The upper two floors each have three windows, all 1/1 sliding sashes except for the top left, which is a 2/1 sash. The top floor of the north elevation is lit by small 3/3 top-opening windows, with a loading door at the centre surmounted by a small gable.

Block 3 is a 1960s block, two storeys high at its north end where it adjoins Block 2, dropping to one storey toward the south. It has a flat concrete roof and painted smooth cement-rendered walls. The two-storey section has two modern windows at ground and first floor, with similar windows to its right cheek at first floor level. The one-storey section has an entrance door at the left and four modern windows to the right. Along the façade above the ground floor windows is painted the inscription: "Baking in Newry since 1837".

Block 5 is a 1960s two-storey building aligned north to south across the east elevations of Blocks 2 and 4. It has a flat concrete roof and cement-rendered walls, with modern windows and doors at ground and first floor. Monopitched open-sided lean-tos abut its east façade.

Block 6 is a large modern single-storey block aligned at right angles to the road and forming the south side of the complex. It has a pitched corrugated asbestos roof and painted smooth cement-rendered walls. Its west and south elevations are blank. Doors and windows face the east gable, which is itself abutted by a modern open-sided lean-to.

The castle has a well-documented historical background. The earliest known map of Newry, dating to the second half of the 16th century — placed at around 1570 by historian Tony Canavan and around 1587 by the Archaeological Survey of County Down — shows a three-storey castle on this site. It was built by Nicholas Bagenal, an Englishman who had settled in Newry in 1539 during the reign of Henry VIII, having fled England to escape criminal prosecution. In 1550, the Cistercian Abbey that had previously occupied this area was dissolved, and its buildings and lands were granted to Bagenal by Edward VI. The map accompanied a proposal by Bagenal to Queen Elizabeth I for strengthening the town's defences, in which the castle is described as "the new castell." Although this wording is somewhat ambiguous as to its precise date of construction, Bagenal states that it was already built at the time of writing. It was most probably constructed in or shortly after 1566, when Bagenal repossessed the town having been ousted some four years earlier by Shane O'Neill and the Irish. Given the conflicts of subsequent decades, in which Newry was frequently at the centre of fighting, the castle is likely to have undergone significant repairs at various points. According to the Frontier Sentinel of 3 April 1937, a staircase tower was demolished around 1755. By the time of John Rocque's 1760 town map and Matthew Wren's map of the following year, the site was marked as "The Shambles," indicating the castle had long since ceased to serve its original military function. The 1838 valuation makes no specific mention of a castle, recording the building simply as one of a number of tenements along Castle Street. The 1863 valuation describes it as "part of the monastery" — a mistaken belief, still current at the time of survey, that the structure was the Cistercian abbot's house rather than Bagenal's castle. This misconception was reinforced by two carved stones on the site, both of which are probably vestiges of the abbey; however, neither remains in its original position, the cross having formerly stood in the street. The Open Window Advertiser of 1901 records that "a few portions of Bagenal's Castle still remain, but are altered into small dwellings now occupied by workmen." A photograph apparently taken around 1937 shows the castle still in residential use.

The bakery itself has separate origins. The original Victoria Bakery was established by Thomas and Matthew McCann in 1837 on the opposite side of Castle Street. It was not until 1894 that the business expanded into the three-storey building on the present site, formerly owned by Joseph Doyle, a florist and seed merchant. At that time the ovens were on the ground floor, the mixers on the first floor, and the flour bins on the top floor. Historical records in the possession of Gerry Murphy indicate that the castle was absorbed into the bakery in 1939. New extensions were added on the south side of the complex in 1964, and the new bakery block was erected on the north side in 1969. The business was subsequently purchased by Irwin's, a Portadown-based bakery, bringing more than 150 years of continuous production to a close. At the time of survey, most of the baking equipment had been removed.