The Shell House

Attached three-bay two-storey house and retail outlet, built c. 1880 and altered c. 1935, having shopfront to ground floor. Now in use as betting office and house with extension to rear. Pitched artificial (fibre cement) slate roof having rendered chimneystacks to either end (south-west and north-east), moulded render convex eaves course, and cast-iron rainwater goods. Cement rendered walls having applied sea shell and crockery mosaic decoration to front elevation, added c. 1935. Plain rendered plinth to base. Square-headed window openings with rendered architraved surrounds and replacement windows. Square-headed doorway to the north-east end of the front elevation (south-east) having rendered architraved surround, replacement timber door, and glazed sidelights and overlight. Shopfront to the south-west end of front elevation having engaged timber pilasters over cement rendered plinth blocks, and with timber brackets over supporting timber fascia with cornice. Applied sea shell, crockery mosaic decoration and name tiles spelling ‘M. PHILLIPS’ to fascia. Recessed square-headed doorway to centre of shopfront having replacement timber glazed door. Doorway flanked to either side by replacement fixed-pane display windows. Decorative glazed tiles to base of stallrisers. Road-fronted to the centre of Bundoran.

Despite some alteration, this typical terraced building of late nineteenth-century appearance, retains much of its early character and form. The form of this building, having living accommodation over a retail outlet, is a characteristic feature of buildings in small Irish towns and villages. Of particular interest is the applied shell and crockery mosaic decoration (probably added during the early-to-mid-twentieth century), which enlivens the front elevation and gives this building a strong presence in the streetscape of Bundoran. This type of decoration was a relatively feature common in seaside locations in Ireland during the mid-twentieth century but examples are now becoming increasingly rare, although there are a few examples still extant in Donegal. It can, perhaps, be seen as a twentieth-century vernacular interpretation of the decoration found in a number of ‘shell houses’, grottos and other picturesque buildings found at a number of eighteenth-century country estates in Ireland, examples of which can be seen at Carton House, County Kildare, and Curraghmore (22900814), County Waterford.