surgery/clinic

Freestanding seven-bay two-storey former clinic, built c.1935, with projecting middle bays to front and rear. End bays accessed at first floor level by external stairs with rendered parapets, and with centrally placed entrance door at ground floor. Hipped slate roof to rear portion with terracotta ridge tiles, paired centrally placed red brick chimneystacks with stepped cornices, and with flat roof to front having rendered parapet. Cast-iron rainwater goods. Smooth channelled rendered to ground floor, roughcast to first floor and to rear elevation. Square-headed window openings to first floor front, now boarded up, with painted sills. Square-headed window openings to earlier section at rear having six-over-six pane and one-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows. Square-headed door openings with render architraves, moulded cornices, and timber panelled doors to end bay openings, central door boarded up. Set back from Main Street, Ballybay with concreted forecourt, rendered boundary wall and piers surmounted by Art Deco-style railings of wrought-iron.

A distinct piece of streetscape in the context of Ballybay, this Art Deco building by architects John F Gahon & Son, Dundalk, is a rarity. Although much altered, a number of the building’s intrinsic architectural details survive. Its strongly symmetrical appearance gives it a dramatic quality in the streetscape.