17 Canal Street, Newry, Co Down, BT35 6JB

17 Canal Street, Newry

A two-and-a-half storey building in three bays with a gabled frontage on the north side of Canal Street, accompanied by a two-storey building in the rear yard.

The main block has a pitched natural slate roof with exposed rafter ends, the rear pitch shallower than the front. Two courses of fish-scale slates run across the centre front and to the dormers. A red brick chimney with a stepped stack embellished with purple brick rises from a plain bargeboarded gable at the centre of the street facade. A low rendered chimney stands on the left gable, and a third likely exists on the rear pitch but is not easily visible. Hipped dormers flank the facade gable on either side of the roof front pitch, each with glazed cheeks and foliated wrought-iron finials. The gutters are half-round metal.

The main facade has painted brick walls rendered to ground floor level, built over a raised base course. A projecting string course runs between ground and first floors, with geometric patterning along the eaves. At ground floor left is a pointed doorway containing a three-panel wooden door with a formerly glazed top panel and raised fielded bottom panels, topped by a triangular transom. To its right are two large openings with rounded jamb edges: the left contains a pair of two-panel broad doors with glazed top panels; the right holds a large four-pane window, now mostly boarded over. A wooden fascia spans the facade above.

The first floor has four regularly spaced 2/2 sliding sash windows arranged symmetrically about a forward-projecting chimney breast. The windows have two-centred heads and painted cills, with the space between frame and arch infilled with three small circular recesses. The chimney breast displays raised bricks in geometric pattern (probably originally of contrasting colour, now obscured by overpaint) and carries a projecting sign advertising 'Car Sales Owen King'. Electricity wires cross the facade above the window heads.

The half-storey is lit at centre by a 1/1 sliding sash window with a Gothic head to match the opening, positioned in the middle of the chimney breast as it rises into the eaves gable. The dormers on either side each have two fixed front windows and glazed cheeks, with ornate metal finials.

The left and right gables of the building are abutted by lower buildings. The exposed walls are smooth cement rendered; internal inspection reveals the left gable to be random rubble and the right of brick. The rear elevation at ground level has been removed to allow access to a one-storey infill building in the rear yard; this opening has subsequently been partially infilled with concrete blocks. The wall above is supported on a horizontal steel joist.

The rear outbuilding is a long two-storey structure running at an angle from the infill shed. It has a pitched roof, probably slated, hipped at its north end and fitted with four skylights on the west slope. Half-round metal gutters, mostly missing, run along the eaves. The ground floor shows a door at left and right, both infilled with concrete blocks. The first floor has three windows with granite cills, all also infilled. The north gable appears to have been rebuilt with concrete blocks and is abutted by an extension with a corrugated asbestos monopitch roof. The west wall is of random rubble. The south gable is open and ties into the infill building.