Lewsley's Public House, 87-89 South Promenade, Newcastle, Ballagbeg, Co Down, BT33 0EY

Lewsley's Public House is a two-storey terraced building with an attic, situated on the west side of the south end of South Promenade in Newcastle, Co Down. The building possibly originated as a house or houses predating 1834, but its front façade acquired its present late Victorian or Edwardian public house appearance around 1900.

The front elevation faces roughly east and is asymmetrical. It is finished in lined render and painted. The ground floor features a large timber-panelled double door with acid-etched fanlight flanked by two large pub windows with painted lettering. The door jambs have small decorative brackets supporting the pub sign above. The windows have moulded cills and moulded panels below. Pairs of pilasters appear to the left of the left window and to the right of the right window. To the right stands a conventionally sized timber-panelled door with plain fanlight, followed by another set of pilasters, then a further window with a pierced ventilator panel to the top of its frame. To the right is another double door (slightly narrower than the first) with similar brackets to the jambs. To its right are another pair of pilasters, a conventional doorway, and a final pair of pilasters. Above this ground floor arrangement runs a long PVC sign board with dentilled cornice above and timber end brackets.

The first floor contains four roughly evenly spaced windows resting on a cill course with moulded surrounds and a string course between them. These windows have modern frames. Two modern projecting pub signs are mounted to the first floor, one internally illuminated.

To the rear, on the left, is a large two-storey gabled return. Its north face appears blank. The gable contains what appears to have been a first floor doorway, now filled with an oddly detailed window frame with panelling beneath. The south face has two first floor windows with modern frames and one ground floor window with a similar frame. To the left of this is a metal-sheeted doorway. To the right on this face is a single-storey flat-roofed extension with a door to its west face. To the right at the rear is a large modern-looking two-storey flat-roofed return with modern windows to all faces. A carriage entrance to the south of this (at No. 91) serves the pub. A modern metal staircase immediately to the north of the modern return gives access to a doorway to the first floor of the rear façade of the main building. To the left of this door is a small window opening with modern frame. The whole rear elevation is finished in plain render and mostly painted.

The main gabled roof has natural slate to the front and artificial slates to the rear. Four cast iron skylights light the front slope, and two much smaller cast iron skylights the rear. Two rendered chimney stacks with moulded corbelling and string courses rise from the roof. Cast iron rainwater goods serve the front, with mainly PVC to the rear.

A building is shown on this site on the Ordnance Survey map of 1834. While difficult to match precisely with valuation plans of 1838, the present pub may be based around a house of the same dimensions recorded as belonging to John McMeekan, which the valuers believed to be perhaps 20 to 30 years old at that point. By 1863 the building was owned by Robert Lowey and was described as containing a shop and rooms as well as living quarters, suggesting it may have been a public house by this stage, though it is known to have operated as a bakery at some point. For most of the twentieth century the property was owned by the Mulholland family until around 1940, and subsequently by the Cowan family until 1980.

Most window frames, including those to the first floor at front, are modern. Artificial slates are used to the rear. To the rear there are two returns, one of which appears to be modern. The addition of this modern return has resulted in the original layout being altered. These alterations have meant the building is no longer of special architectural or historic interest.