store/warehouse, The Quay · NIAH 40800409

This impressive and imposing former warehouse\stores forms part of an important collection of buildings of this type aligning the historic quayside at Ramelton. Although out of use for a considerable period, and with some later additions to the rear, it survives in relatively good condition. Its corner site gives it a prominence in the streetscape. Its integrity is enhanced by the retention of salient fabric such as the natural slate roof and battened timber doors. It is robustly constructed in rubble stone masonry, a feature of the surviving warehouses at Ramelton. This building is one of the earliest surviving former warehouses at Ramelton (depicted on Ordnance Survey first edition six-inch map of c. 1837); many of the other warehouses to the north are later additions, c. 1860. It serves as an historic reminder of the town’s industrial and maritime heyday during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ramelton prospered during the eighteenth and nineteenth century as a major port with trade with Britain, Norway, America, and the Caribbean, particularly important (there are accounts of ships from the Caribbean anchored in Lough Swilly and unloading exotic cargoes at Ramelton in exchange for linen, corn, meat and fish). Ramelton had the most important linen works in Donegal and many fortunes were made in the locality in its trade. The Watt family ran the largest linen works in the area by the start of the nineteenth century and were heavily involved in its trade (Samuel Watt moved to Jamaica in the early 1800s and began importing linen from Ramelton, with his brother James as agent). Corn was another major commodity in the area during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with a number of large mills still surviving in the area. The surviving warehouses, particularly aligned along the north-east end of the quay, attest to the level of trade and commerce in the Ramelton area. Slater’s Directory of 1846 records that ‘vessels of up to one hundred and fifty tons burthen can come up to the quayside [at Ramelton] at high water, and others, almost of any tonnage, can approach within half a mile of the town’. The town and port declined in importance towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the establishment of a railway line to nearby Letterkenny in 1909, with no rail link being built to Ramelton, hastened this decline. This building was later in use as a bottle store or bottling plant by the Swilly Bottling Company. A plaque to site (not seen, possibly removed) records that ‘The Hanging Gale’, a BBC series (1995) set in 1846 at the start of the Great Famine, was filmed in Ramelton. This former warehouse\store forms part of an important collection of industrial structures that contributes substantially to the almost unique character of the town of Ramelton, and is an integral element of the built heritage of County Donegal.