Survey Data
Reg No
11816013
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Social
Original Use
House
In Use As
House
Date
1790 - 1810
Coordinates
262540, 210465
Date Recorded
24/05/2002
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
End-of-terrace five-bay three-storey house, c.1800, on a corner site with round-headed door opening to centre ground floor. Part reroofed and refenestrated, c.1980, with openings remodelled to right ground floor to accommodate commercial use. Now returned to residential use to right ground floor. Gable-ended roof. Replacement artificial slate, c.1980, to pitch to south-west. Original slate to pitch to north-east. Concrete ridge tiles. Roughcast and rendered chimney stacks. Cast-iron rainwater goods on rendered eaves course. Roughcast walls. Painted. Rendered quoins to corners. Square-headed window openings (remodelled, c.1980, to right ground floor). Stone sills. Replacement timber casement windows, c.1980 (fixed-pane display windows to right ground floor with timber panelled door having overlight). Round-headed door opening. Cut-stone doorcase with lintel and keystone. Replacement timber panelled door, c.1980. Spoked fanlight. Road fronted on a corner site. Tarmacadam footpath to front.
Appraisal
This house is a fine, middle-size building of considerable social and historic interest, having been built as a product of the commercialisation and industrialisation of Monasterevin following the development of the Grand Canal in the locality in the late eighteenth century. The house represents the substantial dwellings of the prosperous merchant class that capitalised on the potential of the introduction of the canal to the area. Composed as a sophisticated piece of architecture, the house is a symmetrically-planned building, centred about a simple round-headed door opening with a cut-stone doorcase and spoked fanlight. Renovated in the late twentieth century to accommodate a commercial use to right ground floor, the resulting remodelled openings disturb the balance of the building. Yet the original form of the openings could easily be re-instated. Little of the original features and materials remain intact and the re-instatement of traditional timber fenestration might restore a more accurate representation of the original appearance of the house. The house is an integral component of a terrace of middle-size houses that flanks both West End and Moore Street, leading to Main Street to the south-east, and is an attractive landmark from the River Barrow to south-west. An unusual feature, and something that is shared with its neighbours, thus distinguishing the street, is the detached garden plot located on the opposite side of the street on the bank of the River Barrow. Many of these plots have now become disused and/or overgrown, and are picturesque features that ought to be maintained and preserved.