5a Sandy's Place, Downshire Road, Newry, Co Down, BT34 1ED

5a Sandy's Place, Downshire Road, Newry

This is a two-storey building with semi-basement and attic, constructed in polychromatic brick in the Gothic Revival style. It stands on the east side of Downshire Road.

The roof is pitched with natural slate, finished with scalloped terracotta ridges, coped sandstone verges and moulded kneestones. Half-round metal gutters and square-section down pipes with cast-iron hoppers, attached to walls with scrolled brackets, drain the roof.

The facade walls are predominantly red brick laid in English garden wall bond. The raised basement wall is finished with a chamfered brick course at window head level. Two courses of black brick run horizontally across the facade at ground floor level. Between ground and first floor is a decorative yellow and black cruciform course. Five courses of red brick specials form a decorative corbelled eaves course. At the centre, rising from the wall head, is a decorative brick gable detailed as the main roof, with a band of black, red and yellow brick running between its kneestones.

A broad granite paved path leads from the street to the main entrance, approached by eight granite steps. A modern tubular metal handrail runs to the centre of the steps. Brick parapets flank each side with chamfered sandstone coping and a tile course below.

The main entrance consists of a pair of three-panel timber doors (with raised and fielded bottom panels), set within a three-order Gothic headed opening trimmed with chamfered sandstone. The arch head is filled with ashlar sandstone and contains a central glass roundel etched with a Masonic symbol—compass and square on an open bible inscribed Psalm CXXXIII.

To the right of the ground floor are three 1/1 sliding sash windows with external security grills. Each shares a splayed sandstone cill. The piers, stepped jambs and heads are in stop-end chamfered ashlar sandstone. Above each lintel is a recessed ashlar sandstone panel with inset quatrefoil and daggers, above which sits a vee-jointed segmental sandstone relieving arch. The black brick courses run across the facade at window cill level and at door arch spring level. Notably, all sash windows to the facade have projecting timber cills to the bottom sash in the British style, rather than the typical Irish flush cill.

The basement middle contains a pair of 1/1 sliding sashes with flush splayed sandstone cills, stop-end chamfered brick jambs, and stop-end chamfered sandstone lintels. Over the head is a segmental panel of herringbone brickwork defined by a segmental stop-end chamfered sandstone relieving arch.

To the right of the basement facade is a red brick screen wall rising part-way up the ground floor. At its centre is a three-order Gothic arch in chamfered brick containing a modern stained timber framed-and-sheeted door. A course of black brick runs across the screen at mid-height of the door and at arch spring level. The top of the wall is finished with a black-yellow-red-yellow-black brick five-course band, under a corbelled red brick wall head coped with roll-top terracotta ridges.

At first floor are three equally spaced pairs of 1/1 sliding sash windows. They share a continuous moulded sandstone cill course, positioned one course above the yellow and black band between ground and first floor. Each pair has chamfered sandstone jambs and rounded-corner heads. The heads of the window pairs at left and right support corbelled brick eases courses. Above the middle set of windows is a Gothic two-order sandstone arch with ashlar sandstone infill. The polychromatic brick band between the gable kneestones runs across the top, above which is a moulded sandstone string course. The gable above is decorated with black brick set in diamond patterns. At the apex is a sandstone trefoil vent opening, immediately above which is a band of yellow, red and black bricks.

The left and right elevations are wet dashed. The left gable is devoid of openings. The right gable has, at basement level, a single fire escape door with modern security grill.

The basement to the rear is at ground level due to the sloping topography of the site. The rear elevation is abutted at left and centre by a monopitched return rising almost to eaves level, and to the right by a slightly lower flat-roofed extension. The monopitched return is itself abutted at left by a single-storey flat-roof extension projecting beyond the gable of the main block. The rear wall of the main building has line render and contains a single modern four-pane casement window above the right extension. The additions have wet-dashed walls with no features of interest.

The parapets of the path leading to the main entrance turn out as gateposts at the street. These posts are of red brick, octagonal in section, springing from square bases set on plinths trimmed with chamfered sandstone. Each post has a course of black brick at base and head of the octagonal section, on which is set a pitched octagonal sandstone cap. An identical set of gateposts (with small metal gate) stands at the right end of the boundary wall, from which a concrete path descends to the door in the screen.

The boundary wall to the street is wet-dash rendered with heavy concrete coping.