McCartan Brothers, 2-4 Sugar Island, Newry, Co Down, BT35 6HT

McCartan Brothers, a Grade B2 building, occupies the corner of Sugar Island and Bank Parade in Newry. It comprises a pair of three and a half storey rendered stone buildings with contemporary rear returns and outhouses, now combined as a single property with a ground floor shop running across both buildings on the Sugar Island frontage.

The main block has a pitched natural slate roof with brick chimneys featuring oversailing copings to each gable, and a skylight to the rear pitch of number 4. Metal rainwater goods are present throughout. The front and gable walls are lined render. The rear block is cement rendered (lined) on all but the rear walls, which are coursed and snecked random rubble granite with a projecting eaves course.

On the main façade, each building originally had a ground floor door opening at the left and a shop window to the right. The left opening has been infilled to form a shop window with 3x3 panes, and sole access is now via a pair of three panelled doors with a six-paned transom above. All openings have modern roller shutters. Six fluted Ionic demi-columns, which are hollow and probably fibreglass replacements, rest on rendered plinths and delineate the openings. These support a fascia above which sits a dentilled cornice, all in timber. At first floor, immediately above the fascia, are four equally spaced 6/6 sliding sash windows without horns, with granite cills. Identical but diminished windows are present at second floor. A two-storey building abuts the right gable, with a blank wall above.

The left gable features two modern 7x3 paned shop windows under a corrugated cement sheet canopy, which continues leftward to the gable of a rear outbuilding. Both windows have boxed roller shutters. Above and to the right of the canopy is a plastic box sign, and at the centre of the first floor is a 6/6 sliding sash window.

The rear elevation has a shallow projection at its centre to accommodate conjoining stair landings. Just above ground-first floor level, a gabled and slated link block abuts this projection, connecting to a building in the yard. The ground floor openings of the main back wall are now covered by a modern artificial-tiled lean-to extension which fills the yards of both buildings, continuing along the side of the link block and around the yard building. The upper floor openings of the rear wall have stepped brick jambs and flat brick heads with granite cills. Each upper floor of both buildings has a single 6/6 sliding sash window, with a similar window to the projection at the half landing between first and second floors. Above each upper landing window is a semicircular fanlight with five radiating panes from a semicircular core. The link block has a gabled natural slate roof with small windows projecting above the abutting lean-to roof; these window cills were probably lower originally.

The yard block is constructed of rubble granite, two storeys high, with an asbestos-tiled pyramidal roof and windows on both cheeks projecting above surrounding extensions. The extension fronting Bank Parade has a modern timber door at the left and two modern 5/3 paned shop windows to the right, with raised skylights to the roof.

Along the rear yard wall stands a three-storey random rubble granite outbuilding with a pitched natural slate roof. Its main façade, facing the alley between it and the Arts Centre, is four openings wide. At ground floor is a sheet-metal door at the left and a modern window at the right, an elongation of the original opening. Above the left-hand door is a loading door at first floor level, now infilled, and a similar door on the second floor with a tongue-and-groove door. Above these doors is a projecting dormer gable. The right-hand line of openings almost certainly once contained loading doors, but these have been modified to take modern windows; their dormer gable has been removed. Two windows between these lines appear at first floor (3x3 paned) and two above (both one paned). The right elevation, fronting Bank Parade, has a 3/3 window with box roller shutter at ground floor, with a continuation of the canopy noted above. At first floor is a 3x3 paned window without a cill and a modern fascia directly beneath. The elevation facing the rear of the main block has one 3x3 window at the extreme left and right on both first and second floors. A building belonging to the adjoining property abuts the remaining gable.