1 Old Coastguard Cottages

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 2 storey terrace comprising former cottage for commanding officer and 6 cottages for ranks with an off-centre tower and small outhouses across an entrance street. Opposite each unit is a small enclosed yard with lean-to roofed store. The terrace is reached by a laneway from North Street and is freestanding within its grounds though these are much deminished by later development. The cottages have slated roofs with hips, the tower is flat roofed with a high parapet wall.

No. 1 is 3 bays wide with basement. The sheeted entrance door with small glazed panel door is accessed by bridge across a narrow basement area. The bridge level is several steps below street level. On one side a double hung sliding sash 16 pane window. On the other side paired double hung sliding sash 8 pane windows. Above these windows, but not necessarily centred are similar 16pane sashes. Over the door but not aligning are 2 similar windows, the top one only 2 panes high. All windows and doors are trimmed with sandstone, block bonded to walls with sandstone cills. Walls are roughcast rendered with rusticated sandstone quoins. A projecting continuous corbel course forms eaves with ½ round gutter. Natural slated low pitched roof, hipped at gable with plain ridge and hip tiles. Downpipes on gable. Chimney stack on gable built of grey/yellow brick with overhanging capping and 5 chimney pots. Chimneystack between No. 1 and 2.

The basement area low wall, rendered and painted with coping and simple metal railing and wall returns across both sides of entrance bridge. There are 2 no. similar windows to basement and a door under the bridge.

The gable is roughcast rendered and painted white without openings but with plinth. Gutter returns across gable with 2 no. downpipes.

The back or SE elevation which enjoys the view across lower town and Ballycastle, beyond Fairhead, has central back door with rectangular fanlight, accessed by bridge across basement area. A double hung sliding sash 16 pane window on each side and a 1st floor similar window centred over openings below but centre window narrower. Similar continuous corbel course carrying gutter. All openings trimmed with sandstone block bonded to walls and each end of façade defined by rusticated quoins. Roof slated as before.

The basement area which is wider than that at front of house is split in 2 by bridge to door. Dogleg steps go down from the bridge on one side with a door access under the bridge. There is a low parapet wall around basement area with a railing, and there is a railing to both sides of the bridge. A wall forms balustrade to the basement steps. 2 windows similar to upper windows light basement. Plinth course defines top of basement.

The terrace is now secluded across a laneway from North Street on an elevated site. A street is formed on the west side with stone and partially enclosed small yard for each cottage opposite each one. The gables of the stones form a wall defining one side of the street. The area in front of each cottage is paved with concrete and street gravel. Each end of street is terminated by a wall with piers and gateway for vehicles at one end and for pedestrians at other end. The store with lean-to roof has 2 sheeted doors and walls built of stone. Store now contains boiler for central heating and distribution pipes are underground to cottage.

One side of the entrance laneway has a random rubble stone wall and piers at North Street end.

Historical information

Built as part of a Coast Guard Station erected in 1868 which originally comprised five houses and a tower, probably to the designs of E.T. Owen, assistant architect in the Irish Board of Public Works, in Dublin, under the direction of the board's principal architect, his brother J.H. Owen; E.T. Owen appears to have taken over responsibility for the design of coastguard stations from J.H. Owen in the mid-1860s. The station was vacated by the coastguard c 1960s and the buildings reverted to the Trustees of the Fullerton Estate. The number of the individual residential units is shown in reverse order on OS plan no. 8-8SE published in 1987. This coastguard station appears for the first time on the OS map of 1904; prior to that, the OS map of 1855 shows a coastguard station on a position nearer to the sea, adjacent to the pier, the residences of the officers of that coastguard station being described in the 1830s as being "without anything in their architecture or appearance worthy of description". IHR no. 3746.

References – Primary Sources
1. The Builder, Vol XXVI, 31 October 1868, p 807.
2. OS Map 1855, Co Antrim 5.
3. OS Map 1904, Co Antrim 5.
4. OS plan no. 8-8SE, surveyed 1972, published 1987.
5. Photographs by W.A. Green c 1900 in the collection of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (reference nos. WAG 829, WAG 2062A, and WAG 3353) which show the coastguard station in its original setting and in its original form.
6. Photographs by W. Lawrence c 1900 in the collection of the National Library of Ireland (reference no. 7589) which shows the coastguard station in its original setting and in its original form.
7. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 24: Parishes of County Antrim IX, 1830-2, 1835, 1838-9 (Belfast 1994), p 94 (reference to the residences of the coastguard officers).
8. S. Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, Vol I (London, 1837), p 127 (reference to the previous coastguard station).

Secondary Sources
1. UAHS Glens of Antrim (Belfast, 1971), pp 51-52 (but an entirely erroneous date is given).
2. C. O'Connor and J. O'Regan, Public Works: The Architecture of the Office of Public Works 1831-1987 (AAI, Dublin, 1987), p 20 (describes the board's extensive coastguard buildings programme).
3. C. Dallat, The Road to the Glens (Belfast, 1989), p 79 (reproduces an original photograph by W.A. Green of c 1900, but the caption gives an erroneous date for the coastguard station).
4. C. Dallat, A Tour of the Causeway Coast (Belfast, 1990), pp 3 and 4 (reproduces original photographs by W.A. Green of c 1900).
5. F. Hamond, Antrim Coast and Glens Industrial Heritage (HMSO, Belfast, 1991), pp 68 and 73.
6. UAHS, Buildings at Risk, Vol II (Belfast, 1995), p 8.
7. C.E.B. Brett, Buildings of Co Antrim (Belfast, 1996), p 280 (but erroneous dates are given).
8. Glens of Antrim Historical Society, From Glynn to Glen: a visual record of a millennium (2000), p 42 (reproduces an original photograph by W. Lawrence c 1900).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
V. Authorship

Evaluation

This is one of a terrace of houses which forms part of a former coastguard station of mid-Victorian date which was designed by an important Irish architectural office. Despite some alterations to the exterior and the setting, the building has much architectural and historical interest as well as group value with the other former coastguard houses .