18-20 Church Street, Warrenpoint, Newry, Co Down, BT34 AH

18-20 Church Street, Warrenpoint

A two-storey building with shops on the ground floor, situated on the south side of Church Street. The property was formerly two separate houses, now combined into a single unit. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with rendered and coped chimneys at each end. An advanced eaves course supports half-round metal rainwater goods with a plastic downpipe to the left end of the front elevation.

The front elevation is four windows wide. The walls are lined with render and painted with stepped stucco quoins at the extremities. At the far right of the ground floor is a modern tongue-and-groove door with a plain transom. The remainder of the ground floor is occupied by a modern shop front featuring broad tiled pilasters, a stall riser, aluminium doors and window frames, and a large modern fascia, all of little architectural interest. The first floor contains four equally spaced 1/1 sliding sash windows with horns and painted cills. The right and left gables are abutted by adjacent buildings. The rear elevation has been extended at ground floor level, and there is no rear yard.

The site was occupied by malt stores in the 1830s. The property appears in the Valuation Revision book from 1877 as two houses, having first been recorded in the First Valuation book of 1835. A 1969 Historic Monuments and Buildings survey described the building as late 19th-century construction: two storeys high with shops on the ground floor, rendered finish to the first floor, and raised quoins at the extremities. The original details included plain pilasters with moulded caps rising to consoles supporting a cornice over a name board fascia. One shop front retained its original features—fixed window with moulded cill and two panelled doors with glazed top panels, with a fretted ventilator above the window. The other shop front, dating to the early 20th century, featured a recessed central doorway, a low chamfered polished granite stall riser, and large fixed lights with narrow twin transoms. Window frames resembled slender colonettes with moulded heads and bases. Both shop fascias bore the name "COFFEYS LTD", and a hanging sign reading "K/SHOES" in blue glass within a brass box hung on the first floor. The modern shop frontage was introduced around 1997 with a corporate Mace supermarket design, replacing the earlier commercial facades.