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

17 Canal Street, Newry

A two-and-a-half storey building with three bays and a gabled frontage, now in very derelict condition. Though severely deteriorated, the unusual facade contributes architectural interest to the streetscape. The complex holds social significance as a former public baths and cinema.

The main block features 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 purple brick embellishment rises from a plain bargeboarded gable at the centre of the street facade. A low rendered chimney sits on the left gable, with a probable third on the rear pitch. Hipped dormers project from either side of the roof's front pitch, each with glazed cheeks and foliated wrought-iron finials. Half-round metal gutters edge the roof.

The main facade has painted brick walls, rendered at ground floor level, set above a raised base course. A projecting string course runs between ground and first floors, with a geometric pattern along the eaves. At ground floor left is a pointed doorway containing a three-panel wooden door with triangular transom. To its right are two large rounded-edge openings: one holds a pair of two-panel broad doors (top panels glazed), the other a large four-pane window now mostly boarded. A wooden fascia crosses the facade above.

The first floor displays four regularly spaced 2/2 sliding sash windows arranged symmetrically about a projecting chimney breast. The breast is embellished with raised bricks in geometric pattern and carries a sign advertising 'Car Sales Owen King'. All windows have two-centred heads and painted cills; the space between frame tops and arch undersides is infilled with three small circular recesses. At the upper half-storey, a 1/1 sliding sash window with Gothic head lights the centre of the chimney breast. Side dormers each contain two fixed windows to front with glazed cheeks and ornate metal finials.

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

A long two-storey outbuilding stands at the yard's rear, running at an angle from the infill shed. It has a pitched slate roof, probably, hipped at the north end with four skylights to the west slope and half-round metal gutters, mostly missing. At ground floor, doors at left and right are infilled with concrete blocks. At first floor, three windows with granite cills are similarly infilled. The north gable appears rebuilt in concrete blocks and is abutted by an extension with corrugated asbestos monopitch roof. The west wall is random rubble; the south gable is open and ties into the infill building.

Historical Development

The site was first recorded in a Valuation Book entry of 1873 as a sawmill, workshop and shed belonging to Alexander Wheelan, a prominent Newry building contractor. The rear outbuilding is noted from 1878 onwards as a workshop. In 1884, Wheelan leased the complex to Newry Baths Ltd, which the Newry town Commissioners took over in 1892. The Irish Provincial Electric Theatre Co Ltd assumed the site in 1912, describing it as an office, theatre and house (in the upper part). Local informants confirm the building's use as a cinema, consistent with its designation as an 'electric' theatre. The house appears as a new entry in the Valuation Book around this time, suggesting its erection coincided with the cinema conversion, supported by the use of metal floor joists. The cinema use proved short-lived, with the premises becoming vacant by 1916. In 1921, David, Robert and Joseph McLean took over as a garage, a use that continued until comparatively recently.

The rear outbuilding was erected in the 1870s as a builder's workshop. The front section was constructed around 1912 when the rear building became a cinema.