4 Coastguard Cottages

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single-storey cottage, in red brick with sandstone dressings, in a mixed Victorian style, laid out on an L-shaped plan with a projecting porch in the angle with the front return to the left, built as one of a terrace.

Main entrance faces north-east; entrance facade four openings wide. Doorway recessed in centre of single-bay flat-roofed porch; segmental arch in red sandstone with buff sandstone keystone; original segmental-headed panelled wooden door, painted white; buff sandstone blocking course on porch, badly fractured. Side wall of porch: two windows set in coupled round red sandstone heads; semi-circular headed wooden fixed lights, single-pane; red sandstone cill; PVC downpipe and hopper.

To right of porch, front wall one window wide: red brick; rubble blackstone plinth with red sandstone weathering; roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses; oversailing sandstone eaves course; guttering of tin or PVC, painted, not original; cast iron downpipe. Window rectangular timber sliding sash, vertically hung, 6 over 6, with horns, painted white; red sandstone cill.

To left of porch, wall of front return similar to wall to right, with two windows matching those of adjoining house to left and symmetrically arranged around central axis through hipped roof. First window to left rectangular sliding sash as previous; second window to left semi-circular headed timber sliding sash, vertically hung, with horns, one horizontal glazing bar each sash, set in semi-circular red sandstone arch with buff keystone. Hipped roof of slates as previous. Chimney at left extremity at cross ridge on party wall with adjoining house to left: original moulded red brick with sandstone base weathering and projecting string; cream earthenware pot.

Rear facade: original rear wall of cottage below eaves level now covered by recent extensions in modern idiom, comprising single storey flat-roofed addition to left, with full height PVC patio doors, and two-storey gabled return in red brick with slated roof, PVC windows, and PVC guttering and downpipes, all c 1987. Roof of cottage as on front; moulded red brick chimney, original, paired with identical chimney of adjoining house (no. 3), both standing on common base at party wall.

SETTING: The house is one of a terrace formed by four other similar cottages and one two-storey house, all set back a short distance from the main road and facing the sea. Communal area, part gravelled and part grassed, to the front, with low stone front boundary wall of rubble basalt.

Historical information

Built as one of a terrace of five coastguard cottages in 1873, to the design of the architect William Gray of Belfast. They first appear on the OS map of 1903.

References - Primary

1. Irish Builder and Engineer, 1 October 1873.
2. OS Map 1903, Co Antrim 35.

Secondary

1. F. Hamond, Antrim Coast and Glens Industrial Heritage (HMSO, Belfast, 1991), p 90 (but an erroneous date is given there).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
C. Ornamentation
H-. Alterations detracting from building
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
V. Authorship
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

With its adjoining cottages this forms an attractive mid-Victorian group of former coast guard cottages which retains its original character and most of its original features on its entrance front.