’Old Life Boat House’, [?4A] Portavogie Road, Ballyhalbert, Newtownards, Co Down, BT22 1BU is a listed building in the Ards and North Down local planning authority area, Northern Ireland.
’Old Life Boat House’, [?4A] Portavogie Road, Ballyhalbert, Newtownards, Co Down, BT22 1BU
- WRENN ID
- shadowed-latch-violet
- Grade
- Local Planning Authority
- Ards and North Down
- Constituency
- Strangford MP: Jim Shannon (DUP)
- Country
- Northern Ireland
- Irish grid reference
- J 637 671
- Coordinates
- 54.5261, -5.47152
- Source
- NI Environment Agency listing
Description
This is a former boat house dating from the early nineteenth century, likely constructed between 1820 and 1839. It is located on the rocky shoreline south of Ballyhalbert, near Newtownards, County Down, and has been converted into a dwelling house. The building is long and rectangular, with many new multi-pane timber windows and an asbestos slate hipped roof. The exterior is rendered, and features PVC gutters, down spouts, and a chimney. The original boat house likely had a large, probably arched, doorway for the boat incorporated into its east gable; remnants of the stone slipway for the boat remain at that gable.
An Ordnance Survey map of 1834 shows a building on the site marked as a Coast Guard Station, staffed by six coastguard men and one chief officer, according to the Ordnance Survey Memoirs. Adjacent dwellings are known as ‘Coast Guard Cottages’. A valuation from approximately 1835 and a revision of the Ordnance Survey map from 1860 corroborate this history. A further valuation from about 1863 is also documented. The building possesses industrial archaeological interest.
Local climate
’Old Life Boat House’, [?4A] Portavogie Road, Ballyhalbert, Newtownards, Co Down, BT22 1BU sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,040 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 83% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 94% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 1 freeze-thaw cycle a year, fewer than 99% of listed buildings. Of these, 1 follows at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.2°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- No flood data for this area
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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