10 Bridge St., Rostrevor, Co.Down

10 Bridge Street, Rostrevor

This Grade B listed building is a former public house and shop located on Bridge Street in Rostrevor, County Down, within a conservation area.

The site appears on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map. According to the 1835–36 valuation book, it was at that time a relatively new public house occupied by John Tumelty, measuring 29 feet by 25 by 17 feet with an office of 29½ by 17½ by 9 feet. A gateway is also mentioned, though it remains uncertain whether this access and the room(s) over it belonged to this property or to the adjacent property to the west.

By 1861, the property was recorded as a grocery and public house with coal yard in the hands of Charles Sloan. The recorded dimensions were 10 yards by 8½ by 2, with a portion over the gate of 2 by 6 by 1, an office of 8½ by 5½ by 1½, a coal shed of 14½ by 8 by 1, and a stable of 5 by 5 by 2 feet. Bernard Dunne became tenant in 1866, the same year the property's rateable value fell from £19 to £14. The adjacent property to the west (now 8 Bridge Street) simultaneously rose from £5 to £10 in value, suggesting that the section over the archway was transferred to that property at this date—a conclusion supported by late 19th and early 20th century photographs showing the archway as belonging to number 8.

Mary McGivern became tenant in 1891, followed by Edward and Mary Cole in 1897. In the 1901 census, Edward Cole, a 38-year-old publican, is recorded as living here with his wife Mary, their infant daughter Edith, and a domestic servant. The building was noted as a first-class public house with 9 rooms in use by the family. The Coles were succeeded by another Charles Sloan, presumably a relation of the earlier occupant. A member of the Sloan family was recorded as occupying the property in 1972.

The archway and space over it were in possession of 8 Bridge Street when both properties were surveyed as part of the First Survey of Historic Buildings in Northern Ireland in December 1969, but have since become part of 10 Bridge Street once again.

Bridge Street itself originated as part of the road from Kilkeel, connecting it with the original roads to Rathfriland (present Greenpark Road) and to Newry (following what appears to have been the present Warrenpoint Road before heading inland along today's Rath, Donaghguy and Greenan Roads). Oliver Sloane's 1739 County Down map shows Rostrevor's settlement comprising solely buildings along the northeastern side of the road, suggesting that this side of Bridge Street may mark the village's earliest part. Development on both sides of the street is shown on an estate map of 1767 and on Williamson's 1810 county map, reaching its present extent by the 1834 first edition Ordnance Survey map.

Known in the 1830s as Post Office Street owing to the presence of a post office there, the name was modified to Old Post Office Street by 1861 and finally changed to Bridge Street around 1894. The 1836 Ordnance Survey Memoirs describe the street as leading from the centre of the main street in a south-easterly direction to the bridge of Rostrevor, measuring 155 yards long, 95 feet broad at its broadest point (the north and western end) and 25 feet at its narrowest part next the bridge. The houses are two storeys, noted as being in good order and all used for shops with furnished lodgings for the accommodation of strangers.

The building is currently in shop use.