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

1 Coastguard Cottages, Farmhill Road, Marino, Holywood, Co Down

This is a former coastguard cottage at the end of a terrace, built around 1870 to designs by Enoch Trevor Owen of the Board of Works in Dublin. It stands two storeys high with two bays, constructed in red brick, and is located to the east of Farmhill Road to the north-east of Holywood town centre. The building is rectangular on plan and incorporates a two-storey square watchtower, a double-height extension to the south, and a single-storey extension to the rear. No. 1 was originally the officer's house and, unusually, also contains the watchtower despite being the unit furthest from the sea.

Architectural Character and Exterior

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate, with brick chimneystacks featuring sandstone dentilled eaves. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods run along the projecting eaves. The walling is laid in Flemish bond red brick, with a yellow brick dog-tooth string-course and ornamental stone dressings to the windows. Windows throughout are pointed-headed timber-framed casements, with pointed oriel windows carried on geometric sandstone brackets at first-floor level on the tower. To the rear, windows are replacements.

The principal elevation faces west. To the right of the main wall plane is a single window at both ground and first floor, with the projecting two-storey tower abutting to the right. The tower has a pyramidal slated roof on overhanging eaves, and carved stone angled pistol loops to the oriel window aprons — a deliberate defensive feature of considerable quality and interest, and largely intact. A weathervane survives at the top of the watchtower.

The north elevation is abutted by the adjoining cottage in the terrace. The east (rear) elevation has two first-floor windows and is abutted at ground floor by a modern single-storey extension. The south elevation is abutted by a modern double-height extension with a lean-to roof, which also abuts the tower to the west. This southern extension contains the main entrance, with a single window at both ground and first floor, and a timber herringbone-sheeted door with cast-iron door furniture to the left. An exposed section to the right has a replacement timber door. The tower at this level has an oriel window at first floor and tripartite lancet windows at ground floor.

Interior

The original floor plan is largely intact, although internal finishes are predominantly modern.

Historical Background

On 15 October 1870, the Irish Builder announced that a coastguard station had been commenced at Cultra, Co Down under the Board of Works, with Messrs J and R Thompson as contractors and quantities prepared by Mr Bermingham. The area north of Holywood was relatively undeveloped at this time. In the early 19th century a number of mansions and bathing lodges had been constructed along the coast, while land further inland remained largely undisturbed until the early decades of the 20th century. When the cottages were built they were surrounded by open fields and the grounds of large villas.

The station is first shown and captioned on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901, where it appears as 'Marino Coastguard Station'. According to C.E.B. Brett, the station was built inland without a sea view because coastal plots had already been earmarked for development following the opening of the railway line to Bangor in 1865. Government correspondence of 1 June 1870 records that the watchtower was not considered vital to the finished building, on the grounds that villas yet to be built nearer the coast would in any case have obscured its view of the sea.

The Coast Guard Station first appears in valuation records in 1872, when it was valued at £42. Street directories of the period list a Chief Boatman and four crew at the station. In 1880 the Chief Boatman was John Thompson, and the crew were Francis Beggs, James McKeown, William Medden and Cornelius Cronin. By 1892 the command structure had changed, with a Chief Officer named Edward Jeffers, two Commissioned Boatmen and two Boatmen recorded. At the time of the 1901 census, the current house was occupied by Samuel Webster, an Englishman, who lived with his wife and six children, the eldest aged fourteen and working as a shoemaker. The coastguard houses were listed as vacant in the 1911 census, and it appears that by 1913 the terrace had ceased to operate as a coastguard station and was occupied as private dwellings. Separate valuations for each dwelling begin from 1913 onwards. The present house was then occupied by John Bailey, with a valuation of £6 15s — slightly higher than the middle houses in the row, reflecting its greater size as the end unit. In 1917 the house passed to Jane Campbell, and no further changes are recorded up to 1930.

In 1856, the Coastguard — at that time primarily an anti-smuggling force — was transferred to the Admiralty, with some military functions added to its remit. Responsibility for building and maintaining coastguard stations was given to the Board of Public Works, which designed and built over 60 new stations during the following 20 years. The chief architect at the Board of Works was James Higgins Owen, but after 1863 he delegated design responsibility to Enoch Trevor Owen, who is likely to have been responsible for the station at Marino.

The station follows the standard design for coastguard stations of the period: a terrace of houses with a clearly defined officer's house at one end and a watchtower at the other, the latter housing the room where the nightly watch was kept and where the crew's arms were stored. According to Mayne, stations were often built to a standard design with slight amendments according to terrain and the availability of local materials. A typical crew's house had a scullery of approximately 8ft by 10ft fitted with 24 wrought-iron hat and clothes pins, and a living room of roughly 17ft by 11ft on the ground floor. Upstairs were a master bedroom of the same dimensions as the living room and two smaller bedrooms. Behind the terrace was a yard with domestic offices for each house, including a coal shed and a two-seater privy with yellow pine seats. A communal wash house stood at the centre of the row, with wash days allocated by rota among the households, and a pump sometimes stood in the middle of the yard.

Coastguard stations were often vulnerable during times of unrest, the coastguard being regarded as representatives of the Crown. Following sectarian riots in 1864, gun loops were inserted into coastguard terraces in much greater numbers; the Marino station is particularly well defended in this way. Oriel windows and wrought-iron shutters also formed part of the defensive provision, and interconnecting doors were fitted between the bedrooms on the first floor so that crews could defend any part of the station.

Setting

The terrace is set back from the road with a small front garden enclosed by a mature hedgerow. To the south is access to rear car parking and a large mature garden.

The house remains in use as a domestic dwelling and forms part of a significant and coherent group of coastguard buildings. It is of interest both as an individual work likely attributable to Enoch Trevor Owen and as part of the wider coastguard estate in Northern Ireland.