Survey Data
Reg No
40815082
Original Use
Shop/retail outlet
Date
1920 - 1930
Coordinates
234960, 431875
Date Recorded
05/12/2012
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Attached four-bay two-storey house, built c. 1840, now with shopfront, dated 1926. Probably originally two separate buildings later amalgamated to form a single property. Pitched artificial slate roof with red brick chimneystack to the south gable end and with modern brick chimneystack to the north gable end. Painted rendered walls. Square-headed window openings having stone sills and replacement windows. Square-headed doorway with replacement door. Shopfront to the north end of the front elevation (west) having Vitrolite panels, fixed-pane display windows with chrome detailing, central doorway with glass door, and having raised lettering over reading ‘Grant’s Shoes’ and ‘Est. 1926’, and with raised shoe motif. Metal railing attached to wall over. Street-fronted to the south of the centre of Buncrana.
Appraisal
This altered house is notable for the fine early twentieth-century shopfront that was probably inserted into an earlier building. It is a rare surviving example of a Vitrolite shopfront with chrome trim in a small provincial town in Ireland, and probably the only surviving example of its type in County Donegal. The use of black\dark Vitrolite with raised lettering was once a relatively common motif in the larger Irish towns and cities but are now rare survivals. It owes something to the De Stijl architectural movement of the early twentieth century with the uniform planes and clean lines and surfaces, and could be viewed as an early Irish example in the Modern Movement. This shopfront makes a positive contribution to the streetscape to the south-east of the centre of Buncrana, and is an addition to the built heritage of the town.