3 Coastguard Cottages, Farmhill Road, Marino, Holywood, Co Down, BT18 0AG

3 Coastguard Cottages is a mid-terrace, two-storey, single-bay former coastguard cottage built around 1870, forming part of a coherent and well-preserved coastguard estate at Marino, north-east of Holywood town centre in County Down. It was designed by Enoch Trevor Owen, who worked under James Higgins Owen at the Board of Public Works in Dublin, which was responsible for designing and building over 60 new coastguard stations following the transfer of the Coastguard to the Admiralty in 1856. The building is rectangular on plan with a single-storey extension to the rear.

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate, with brick chimneystacks featuring sandstone dentilled eaves. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods hang from projecting eaves. The walls are laid in Flemish-bonded red brick with a yellow brick dog-tooth string-course and ornamental stone dressings around the windows. The windows are pointed-headed, multi-paned timber sliding sash. The principal elevation faces west and has a window to the right at first-floor level; at ground floor there is a window to the right and an entrance door to the left, fitted with a timber sheeted door with a diamond-glazed panel to the upper portion and a cast-iron door knob. The north elevation abuts the adjoining property to the north. The east (rear) elevation has a uPVC window at first-floor centre and is abutted at ground floor by a modern flat-roofed brick extension. The south elevation abuts the adjoining property to the south.

The terrace is set back from Farmhill Road behind a small lawned front garden enclosed by a mature hedgerow and a cast-iron gate. To the rear is a large mature garden enclosed by mature hedgerow, separated from the house by a communal pathway.

The quality of architectural detailing throughout the terrace is high and largely intact, including the weathervane at the top of the watch tower and the carved stone angled gun loops. The gun loops reflect a deliberate defensive strategy: following sectarian riots in 1864, coastguard terraces across Ireland had gun loops inserted in greater numbers, and the Marino station is particularly well provided with them. Oriel windows, wrought-iron shutters, and interconnecting doors between the first-floor bedrooms were also fitted to allow crews to defend any part of the station.

Marino Coastguard Station follows the standard layout for stations of its type: a terrace of crew houses with a clearly defined officer's house at one end and a watch tower at the other, which housed the nightly watch room and the crew's arms. According to contemporary accounts, a standard crew's house had a ground floor comprising a scullery of approximately 8 by 10 feet fitted with 24 wrought-iron hat and clothes pins, and a living room of approximately 17 by 11 feet. Upstairs were a master bedroom of similar dimensions and two smaller bedrooms. At the rear of the terrace was a yard with domestic offices including, for each house, a coal shed and a two-seater privy with yellow pine seats, a communal wash house, and sometimes a pump. The station at Marino was built inland without a sea view, reportedly because coastal plots had already been earmarked for development following the opening of the railway line to Bangor in 1865, and government correspondence of 1 June 1870 records that the watch tower was not considered essential to the finished design since villas yet to be built nearer the coast would have obscured its view in any case.

Construction was announced in the Irish Builder on 15 October 1870, which noted that a coastguard station had been commenced at Cultra, County Down under the Board of Works, with Messrs J and R Thompson as contractors and quantities prepared by Mr Bermingham. The station first appears as 'Marino Coastguard Station' on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901 and entered valuation records in 1872 with a valuation of £42. Street directories of the period record a Chief Boatman and four crew; in 1880 these were Chief Boatman John Thompson and crew members Francis Beggs, James McKeown, William Medden, and Cornelius Cronin. By 1892 the command structure had changed to a Chief Officer, Edward Jeffers, two Commissioned Boatmen, and two Boatmen.

The 1901 census records this house as consisting of four rooms and classifies it as second class based on its size and construction, consistent with the other houses in the terrace. It was occupied at that time by local man John Davidson, his wife, and their young daughter. By the 1911 census the coastguard houses are listed as vacant, and valuation records indicate that by 1913 the terrace had ceased to function as a coastguard station and was let as private dwellings, with separate valuations given for each house from that point. This house was valued at £4. Recorded occupiers include R J Blackthorne from 1913, William Ross from 1917, and James Millar from 1922.