4a 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.

This record is that of the former watch tower which is set off-centre in a terrace of coastguard cottages. It is a sandstone built rectangular watch tower which breaks the building line of the cottages at front and rear, is 3 storeys high with a high brick built parapet wall. Elevation to SE has central ground floor double hung sliding sash window, boarded up, a similar window 12 pane directly above at 1st floor and on 2nd floor a quasi-segmental headeddouble hung sliding sash 9 pane window centrally placed. On each side of windows blank slits. The corner arrises chamfered. Projecting from the brick parapet wall a machicolation supported on 2 large pointed sandstone corbels. A plain sandstone band circumscribes the base of the parapet wall. 2 large downpipes from trunkheads drain the tower flat roof. The NW wall of the tower is similar except that ground floor has a narrow door with fanlight and at 1st floor a pair of double hung sliding sash 8 pane windows. Machicolations are repeated at the ends of the long walls of the parapet. The parapet wall is pierced on all sides including the projections with narrow gun loops.

Above the parapet can be seen the conical top of the stairwell giving access to roof. The towers are built of the local pinkish sandstone roughly coursed and showing a good layer of grime. Narrow gun loops also decorate the projecting side walls of the tower.

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.

Building undergoing renovations at time of survey to an scheme with listed building consent. This includes internal alterations and modification of the parapet wall.

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
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

This is a former watch tower, designed in a medieval revivalist style by an important Irish architectural office, built along with its adjoining terrace houses as part of a mid-Victorian coastguard station. 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 .