5 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 right, 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 buff sandstone; original segmental-headed panelled wooden door, dark stained, modern replacement; buff sandstone blocking course on porch. Side wall of porch: two windows set in coupled round red sandstone heads; semi-circular headed timber fixed lights, single-pane, reeded glass in the one to right; red sandstone cill; cast iron downpipe.

To left 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; PVC guttering; window rectangular timber sliding sash, vertically hung, 6 over 6, with horns, painted white; flat arch head in red sandstone with buff keystone; red sandstone cill.

To right of porch, wall of front return similar to wall to left, with two windows matching those of adjoining house to right and symmetrically arranged around central axis through ridge of hipped roof. First window to right rectangular sliding sash as previous; second window to right 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. Chimneys at extremities of house: to left just behind ridge, one chimney coupled with one of adjoining house in moulded red brick with cream earthenware pot, original; to right, at cross ridge of return, shared with adjoining house to right, moulded red brick with sandstone weathering to base and a projecting string course, cream earthenware pots, original.

Rear facade: original rear walling one window wide, of basalt with brick dressings later painted red, containing rectangular window, timber fixed light with top-hung vent-light, modern replacement; to left later flat-roofed bay in corner with rear return, smooth rendered with rectangular wooden fixed lights; flush door with large glazed panel, modern addition; rear return of basalt rubble with cement rendered portion; lean-to roofs, slated as previous with modern cylindrical boiler house flue; PVC windows, modern replacements; ledged door, original; PVC gutters and downpipes; small yard floored in concrete.

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.