Lightkeeper's house, East Light, Ballycarry Td, Rathlin Island, Co. Antrim

Lightkeeper's House, East Light Complex, Rathlin Island, County Antrim

This is a refurbished mid-19th century lighthouse keeper's house with associated outbuildings, water tank, enclosing walls, gates, and gate piers, forming part of the East Light complex on Rathlin Island — the earliest of three lights on the island. It was designed by George Halpin Senior, Inspector of Works and Lighthouses from 1810 until his death in 1854, who was also responsible for many of Ireland's other lighthouses, including Haulbowline and St John's Point in County Down. Work on the lighthouse began in May 1849 and its light was first exhibited in November 1856. Although modest in scale, the house is of robust construction suited to its exposed headland setting, and is of local historical interest as a reminder of the pre-automation era.

The house and its associated structures have group value with the rest of the East Light premises, including the lighthouse and fog signal buildings (listed separately as HB05/16/010A) and the semi-detached keepers' houses to the south (HB05/16/010C and D).

HOUSE

The house itself is a one-and-a-half-storey, two-bay structure with single-storey annexes at both ends, the whole range aligned north to south at the south-west end of the lighthouse premises. It has been refurbished in the relatively recent past and is periodically occupied by maintenance crews. The symmetrical façade reflects the internal room configuration.

The walls are of locally-quarried random rubble masonry brought to courses, with imported granite used for a chamfered base course and advanced eaves course. The roof is a replacement pitched natural slate roof with advanced granite block verges, rendered and banded gable chimneys, and modern skylights to both pitches. Half-round metal gutters are fitted throughout.

The principal elevation faces east. It is symmetrical, with a plain painted timber door to the centre — fitted with a five-pane rectangular overlight and a granite threshold — flanked by 8-over-8 timber sliding sash windows with granite cills. All openings have flat heads and jambs of slightly projecting granite. There is an electric light over the door head, a satellite dish above the right-hand window, and an aerial on the south-east quoin. The west elevation and north gable are identical to the east and south elevations respectively. The exposed upper portion of the south gable is cement rendered and has a 6-over-6 timber sash window at its apex, with rendered head and jambs and a granite cill.

To the front of the house is a patch of grass with a central footpath running from a pedestrian entrance gate to the front door. This frontage is enclosed by a random rubble wall, part of which is coped with dressed granite blocks. The gate is of painted wrought iron and is hung between square dressed stone piers with advanced footings and oversailing caps of granite. There is a flagged stone path around the house (except at the north). Behind the house is an unsurfaced yard, delineated by a rubble wall at its north end and by the outbuildings to the west.

SOUTH ANNEX

The single-storey annex on the south gable is contemporary with the house. In later years it was used for the storage of detonators for the fog signal — kept separately from the explosives for safety — and was probably converted to this purpose around 1918 when tonite fog signalling was adopted (the internal steel doors in this annex and in the explosives store are identical). It is presumed to have had a monopitched roof originally, but this was replaced with a flat concrete roof. A half-round metal gutter runs along the south elevation, which formerly discharged into the detached water tank to the south. The walls are detailed in the same manner as the house except that there is no advanced base course along the south side. On the east elevation there is a painted tongue-and-groove door set in an opening with a reinforced concrete head, dark-brown brick jambs, and a granite threshold formed by cutting out part of the granite base course; the door head was evidently modified when the building was reroofed. The south elevation is blank. The north elevation originally had a doorway at the left, but its surround has been removed and the void infilled with random rubble; the former position of the door is marked by a slot cut into the base course where the threshold once sat.

NORTH ANNEX

The single-storey annex on the north gable was also built at the same time as the house. It has recently been refurbished and internally incorporated into the house. It has a replacement monopitched natural slate roof with granite verges and walls detailed as those of the house. A half-round metal gutter runs along the north elevation. On the east elevation there is a doorway with a head and jambs of dark-brown brick, which was infilled and rendered over during the refurbishment; a plastic soil pipe runs up the wall at the right. The north elevation has two 3-over-6 timber sliding sash windows. The west elevation has a doorway detailed similarly to that on the east, but infilled with random rubble.

OUTBUILDINGS

Directly west of the house is a single-storey, four-bay row of outhouses, largely contemporary with the house, some of which are still used as stores. The roof is monopitched natural slate covered with tarred felt, with granite verges at each end and between bays one and two and bays two and three (numbered from south to north). The roofline to bay one is slightly higher than the others. Half-round plastic gutters run along the east elevation. The walls are of unembellished random rubble.

The principal elevation faces east towards the house. Bay one formerly had a window opening that has since been infilled with random rubble. Bay two has a painted tongue-and-groove door with a timber head and red-brick jambs set into an infill wall. Bay three has a painted tongue-and-groove door with a granite head and dark-brown brick jambs, and a 3-by-2 timber casement window trimmed in dark-brown brick with a concrete cill. Bay four has a pair of painted tongue-and-groove doors.

The south gable has two door openings, each giving access to a separate room in bay one, without surviving door frames; both openings have flat granite heads and dressed stone jambs. The west elevation has no openings. Quoin stones embedded in the wall indicate that bay two was inserted between bays one and three, its west side built on top of a pre-existing perimeter wall. A dressed granite coping survives along the top of bay one at the right. Old maps and photographs show that the west elevation originally continued northwards to enclose a yard at the back of another single-storey house — long since demolished — immediately north of the existing one. The outbuilding's north elevation forms part of the boundary to the house enclosure and has no openings, though the north-west quoin has been rebuilt — doubtless when the rest of that enclosing wall was demolished — and there is a ghost visible in an old photograph of a lower building long since removed.

WATER TANK

Just south of the house is a standing covered water tank that supplied the keepers' houses with rainwater collected off the roofs; mains water has only recently become available. The tank contained two internal cisterns — one serving the surviving house and one serving a second house to the south, now demolished. It has a flat concrete roof with two raised square access covers and intakes for rainwater pipes, of which only the pipe from the south annex of the surviving house remains. The walls are cement-rendered and have no openings except on the west elevation, which has two overflow pipes at the top and two recessed drain taps at the bottom, one per cistern. The dividing boundary wall between the two keepers' house enclosures abuts the tank's east elevation; this wall originally continued westward and terminated in a gate pier shared between the two houses. The tank is now defunct, and water is pumped directly from a nearby lake to the houses.

ENCLOSING WALLS AND GATES

The house is enclosed on three sides by a random rubble wall, part of which is coped with dressed granite. An almost identical enclosure formerly abutted to the south around a second keeper's house that is now long demolished and survives only as a surface footprint, though its east frontage wall remains, similar in character to that of the surviving house albeit with a slightly wider gateway and no surviving gate. A taller vehicular gateway on the south side of the former enclosure has cement-rendered piers but is also missing its gate. Of a further gateway at the north end of the west wall, only the south pier now survives, detailed as the north pier of the gateway to the surviving house. The yard behind the house was accessed through a gateway at the south-west corner of the house enclosure; the north gate pier abuts the south-west corner of the outbuilding, but its opposite pier and gate are long gone. This pier is of random stone blocks detailed as those on the east wall.

INTERIOR

Although the interior has been refurbished, much of the original character survives, notably the fireplaces, flooring, doors, architraves, and staircase.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

Two houses are shown on the 1856 Ordnance Survey map. Their associated outbuildings and enclosing walls are not shown, as they were probably still under construction. All had been completed by 1859, when the buildings are recorded in the Valuation of that year. Each house comprised three parts: the house proper measuring 13 yards by 8 yards at one and a half storeys, and two single-storey annexes each measuring 3 yards by 8 yards — dimensions that accord with the present situation. The outbuildings belonging to each house are also noted, measuring 14 yards by 4 yards and 7 yards by 4 yards respectively.

By the time of the 1904 Ordnance Survey map, there were four keepers' houses in use — the original two, a third to the west of the surviving single-storey house (43 feet by 16 feet by 10 feet 6 inches), and a fourth along the inside of the premises wall (35 feet by 21 feet 9 inches by 14 feet 6 inches). The middle bay of the outbuilding block had also been inserted by this date, as evidenced by the embedded quoin stones. By 1922, a pair of two-storey semi-detached houses had been built at the south-east corner of the premises (HB05/16/010C and D) to accommodate the families of keepers assigned to the West Light, which began operations in 1919; in practice, families were allocated housing as it became available, irrespective of whether the keeper was assigned to the East or West Light.

The single-storey house in the southern enclosure and its associated outbuildings had disappeared by the 1971 Ordnance Survey map, as had the two other single-storey houses, all having been lost to Irish Lights' building rationalisation programme in the late 1960s. The East Light was automated in March 1995, at which point the keepers were withdrawn from the remaining houses. The surviving house under review was subsequently refurbished by Irish Lights in the mid-2000s to provide temporary accommodation for maintenance crews and remains in use for this purpose.

SETTING

The house and its associated outbuildings, water tank, and enclosing walls are part of a more extensive complex that includes the lighthouse with base lantern, rocket house, gun platform, and explosives store to the north, the pair of later semi-detached keepers' houses to the south, and fog-signal buildings to the east. A concrete footpath connects these various buildings and structures. The entire complex sits on an exposed rocky headland commanding extensive views across the North Channel to Islay and the Mull of Kintyre.