130 Castlewellan Road, Cabra, Rathfriland, Newry, Co Down, BT34 5RA

Two storey, three bay house and shop dating to the mid-19th century, with a two storey outbuilding to the rear, situated on the north side of Castlewellan Road immediately east of St Mary's Roman Catholic Church.

The main house is set back from the road and first appears on the 1859 Ordnance Survey 6-inch map. The building demonstrates the adaptation of a dwelling for commercial purposes, though it was not originally designed as a shop with dwelling, and there were no significant structural changes made for this purpose. The shop fittings are not original.

The pitched natural slate roof is finished with clay ridges and dressed granite skews. Each gable has a punched ashlar granite chimney with overhanging coping. Semicircular cast iron rainwater goods sit on plain corbelled eaves. The walls are lined and painted lime render.

The south-facing front elevation has four openings to each floor. The ground floor left bay contains a shop unit, accessed by a pair of narrow tongue and groove sheeted storm doors with a plainly glazed transom. To the right of these is a rectangular fixed window with 16 paned Georgian glazing (4x4), featuring a dressed granite cill and wrought iron security bars. The middle bay has a four panelled painted timber 19th-century door in poor condition with raised and fielded bolection-moulded panels, decorative iron knob and knocker, and a decoratively chamfered timber moulding between it and the plain transom above. The right bay at ground floor is centred with an 8/8 sliding sash window, detailed identically to the shop window with bars and cill. The first floor has four windows in line with those below but diminished in height—all are 2/1 horizontally divided sliding sashes in an advanced state of decay, likely formerly 8/4 paned. The left gable is blank.

The rear elevation is lime harled and whitewashed. At ground floor, from left to right, are an 8/8 sliding sash window with security bars and cill; a small tongue and groove sheeted door on the central bay; a small 6/3 sliding sash window with horns and security bars; and an 8/8 sash window serving the shop, also with security bars. The first floor has three windows: those to the left and right bays are 8/4 sashes with no horns and painted granite cills, while the middle bay window is an 8/8 sliding sash with a lower cill to accommodate the larger bottom sash. The right gable is blank.

The two storey outbuilding is aligned north-south and abuts the northeast corner of the house, partially enclosing a rear yard. It has a pitched natural slate roof with skews matching the main house, with exceptionally large slates approximately 60 centimetres by 90 centimetres each. The walls are granite rubble, lime rendered.

The west-facing elevation into the yard contains, at ground floor from left to right, a doorway; two vertical wall vents; a pair of post-War steel casements with a short granite cill (suggesting an earlier opening has been widened); a three-quarter height door; and at the end a wide doorway with a low semi-elliptical head and hinge bolts to its reveals. The first floor has three openings: a window with exposed frame and granite cill at the left; a tongue and groove sheeted loading door with broad boards and granite cill over the ground floor steel casement; and a second sheeted loading door at the extreme right.

The north gable is blank and abutted with earth to approximately one metre above ground level in the yard. The rear wall is similarly embanked to approximately 1.5 metres, with two ground level vents serving the ground floor and a loading door with a rough earthen ramp at first floor to the right of centre. To the left of this door is a square vent with a collapsed head.

The rear yard is enclosed to the west and north by a rubble granite wall. At the join with the house on the west wall stands a pair of dressed granite gate piers with octagonal granite caps, supporting a pair of flat iron gates with dog bars and decorative heads. Within the yard is a cast iron pump with its cap missing, and two derelict lean-to sheds. On the northwest corner at the lane boundary stands a traditional circular gatepost, its twin and associated gates now gone.

The building is recorded as occupied in the second valuation of circa 1861 by Peter McCunn. The dimensions noted were 40 feet by 24 feet, two storeys for the house, and 39 feet by 18 feet, two storeys for the outbuilding.

The building is not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest.