Former market house, The Square, Crossgar, Co Down, BT30 9EE

Former Market House

This is a relatively plain two-storey gabled market house erected in 1829 on the east side of The Square at the junction of John Street in Crossgar. It was built by William Thompson of Downpatrick, who had recently acquired the townland, at a cost of £30 to serve the newly laid out market square. The building is typical of its type and era.

The front façade faces roughly west and is generally symmetrical, finished in painted roughcast with simple surrounds to openings. The ground floor contains three large semicircular arched recesses which were originally open but are now blocked. The recess to the right has a timber-sheeted doorway with an adjoining window to its left (now boarded). The central recess has a narrower window (also boarded), and the left-hand recess has a broad window. To the right of the right recess there is another narrow window (also boarded), and to the right of this window there was formerly a doorway. The first floor has six sash windows with vertical astragals arranged almost symmetrically, with a clock face positioned between the third and fourth windows.

The north gable is abutted by a single-storey house, with the exposed upper portion finished in random rubble. The south gable is finished in painted roughcast and has a first-floor window to the left.

Covering almost the whole of the rear is a single-storey lean-to section, whose roofline merges with that of the main roof. The lean-to appears to be original. To the centre of the lean-to is a taller gabled section containing a timber-sheeted doorway set at a high level, with a boarded-up fanlight. The left and right sides of the lean-to's east façade each have a small window. The lean-to is finished in unpainted roughcast, with the left half roofed in corrugated asbestos, the right half in corrugated iron, and the central portion in natural slate. The main building roof is covered in natural slate, with a rendered chimney stack to each gable.

According to the 1836 Ordnance Survey Memoirs, the ground floor originally contained a weighing room, with the upper level partly for storing grain and partly for a carpenter's shop. The market was held every Wednesday with a fair held monthly. The weekly market ceased to be held after around 1890. Around 1900 the upper floor was converted to a school, and it was possibly at this stage that the ground-floor arched recesses were blocked up. In the mid to later twentieth century the building served as a Church of Ireland hall, and in the 1980s as an office.