794 Seacoast Road

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Detached single-storey corrugated iron holiday home, built c.1935, with front entrance porch. Rectangular on plan facing north onto Seacoast road on an elevated site overlooking the north coast.

Shallow pitched corrugated iron roof with iron ridge and uPVC rainwater goods. Corrugated iron-clad walling with projecting cement plinth course. Square-headed window openings with uPVC windows.

Front elevation is three openings wide with a central entrance porch. Shallow pitched corrugated iron roof to the entrance porch having fixed-pane timber windows to the cheeks and replacement timber glazed and panelled door.

Blank east side elevation is abutted by a rendered chimneystack and a diminutive accretion.

Rear elevation has a catslide corrugated iron roof encompassing a full-span lean-to addition, also clad in corrugaetd iron.

Gabled west side elevation has a single off-centre window.

Setting:
Located on an elevated site on the south side of Seacoast Road overlooking the coast.

Roof Corrugated iron
RWG UPVC
Walling Corrugated iron
Windows UPVC

Historical information

The current holiday home is one of a number built on a strip of land lying at the foot of a cliff along the north Londonderry coastline. Twenty five small dwellings of wood or corrugated iron were erected between railway line and cliffs in the mid-1930s on land that had been leased from James McKay. Each appears to have been individually built by a different occupier for use during the summer months.

The building is first shown on the OS map edition dating from the 1960s/70s. Because of its late appearance on OS maps, it is not possible to distinguish the building with certainty in valuation records. However, it appears to be one of two corrugated irons buildings erected by Thomas Gardiner and Andrew Hunter and entering valuation records in 1934. Each was valued at £4 and was let during July and August for £6 to £7 a month and in June and September for £4. The cost of construction was £70-5 and the dwellings were erected on concrete foundations. The buildings had no electricity, water or plumbing and were lit by lamps with water brought from elsewhere. Each had a dry closet.

The dwelling exemplifies a type of interwar development known as ‘plotland’, more common in Britain than Ireland, which made use of cliff tops, shingle shores and inland river banks. An agricultural depression and the absence of planning controls meant that marginal land could be acquired cheaply by speculators and sold off as individual plots. Cheap, improvised dwellings were then constructed, using as their basis items such as former railway carriages or wooden chalet style structures supplied in kit form. Plotland developments were usually ignored by local authorities and were without electricity or sanitation. Often seen by conservationists as a desecration of the rural landscape, the popularity of plotland development in the inter-war period can also be seen as a democratisation of access to the countryside (Rowley).

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/5/2/1 First Edition OS Map 1831
2. PRONI OS/6/5/2/2 Second Edition OS map 1848
3. PRONI OS/6/5/2/3 Third Edition OS Map 1904
4. PRONI OS/6/5/2/4 Fourth Edition OS Map 1923
5. PRONI VAL/12/F/6/2/3 Annual Revisions (1930-35)
6. PRONI VAL/3/C/6/2 First General Revaluation 1933-57
7. PRONI VAL/3/D/6/3/H/3 First General Revaluation 1933-57

Secondary Sources

1. Rowley, T “The English Landscape in the Twentieth Century” London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Detached single-storey corrugated iron clad holiday home, built c.1935, with front entrance porch. Rectangular on plan facing north onto Seacoast road on an elevated site overlooking the north coast. Built in the interwar period, this holiday home is one of a number constructed on this stretch of coast. While few original features remain extant, this is one of the better examples of its type whose diminutive proportions and use of traditional early 20thC materials give it some architecturlal character. Not of sufficient interest to consider listing.