Survey Data
Reg No
40503185
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural
Original Use
House
Historical Use
Shop/retail outlet
In Use As
House
Date
1850 - 1870
Coordinates
216763, 411076
Date Recorded
01/12/2008
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Attached two-bay three-storey house, built c. 1860, with former shop to ground floor, c. 1953, and two-storey extension to the rear (south-east). Now disused. Pitched natural slate roof with blue black clay ridge tiles, brick chimneystack with brick platband to cap to north-east end and cement rendered chimneystack with moulded cornice to cap to south-west end of roof, and with projecting rendered eaves course. Roughcast rendered walls. Square-headed window openings with one-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows at first and second floor level front (north-west) and rear (south-east) elevations; square-headed window opening to former shopfront, now blocked, having two-over-two pane timber sliding sash window. Square-headed window openings to return with casement windows. Some remaining stone sills. Square-headed entrance door openings to front elevation (north-west) having replacement painted timber panelled doors with glazed panels to upper sections. Road- fronted to the south-west of the centre of Main Street, Letterkenny.
Appraisal
This modest mid-terrace building, dating to the mid-nineteenth-century, retains its early character and form despite the insertion of a later shopfront. This building is one of the few traditional buildings along Main Street, Letterkenny, that retains much of its salient fabric including natural slate roof and timber sliding sash windows. It dates to a period when Letterkenny was a thriving and expanding regional market town. The scale, height and proportions of the building combine with those of its neighbours to create an interesting and uniform streetscape. Buildings of this type were, until recent years, a ubiquitous feature of the streetscapes of Irish towns. However, most of these buildings have been insensitively altered or replaced, which makes this relatively intact example in Letterkenny an increasingly rare relatively intact surviving example of its type and date. This building makes a positive contribution to the streetscape to the south of the centre of Letterkenny, and is an addition to the built heritage of the town.