4 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. 4 is 2 bays wide.

The entrance door is placed next to tower with high rectangular fanlight to the left a 2 light window, one narrower than the other with sandstone mullion. Both windows were boarded up at the time of survey. At first floor 2 double hung sliding sash 12 pane windows not quite central over elements below. All openings trimmed with sandstone block bonded into wall. Wall harled and unpainted, plinth, continuous corbel course with ½ round gutter secured to face. No downpipe. Roof slated and chimney stack on ridge, long side parallel to ridge. This cottage abuts tower and is in a dilapidated state.

The rear or NW elevation has a single vertical window centred on wall and boarded up, above and centred on wall 2 light double hung sliding sash 8 pane window with broad mullion between. Where the wall abuts the tower 2 slit windows, one at ground floor, the other at first floor. All openings are trimmed with sandstone, continuous corbel course with gutter fixed to it. Occupying the angle between cottage and tower a lean-to small store. Wall is harled, unpainted and a plinth.

The outhouse and partially enclosed yard opposite in a dilapidated state.

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.

This building though boarded up at the time of this survey in 2000 ha subsequently been renovated with Listed Building Consent. Works are to be completed in 2004.

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 .