1 Old Coastguard Cottages, North Street, Ballycastle, Co Antrim, BT54 6BZ

One of a terrace of former coastguard cottages forming part of a mid-Victorian coastguard station of considerable architectural and historical importance. The building retains group value with the other former coastguard houses despite some exterior alterations and diminishment of its original setting through later development.

The terrace comprises a two-storey structure consisting of a former commanding officer's cottage and six cottages for ranks, arranged with an off-centre tower and small outhouses arranged across an entrance street. Opposite each residential unit stands a small enclosed yard with a lean-to roofed stone store. The terrace is reached by a laneway from North Street and sits on an elevated site, though its grounds have been significantly reduced by later building.

Number 1 is three bays wide with a basement. The front entrance features a sheeted door with a small glazed panel, accessed by a bridge crossing a narrow basement area set several steps below street level. To one side is a double hung sliding sash window with 16 panes; on the other, a pair of double hung sliding sash windows with 8 panes each. Above these, but not necessarily centred, are similar 16-pane sash windows. Over the door, similarly unaligned, are two similar windows, the upper one only 2 panes high. Windows and doors throughout are trimmed with sandstone, block bonded to the walls with sandstone cills. The walls are roughcast rendered with rusticated sandstone quoins. A projecting continuous corbel course forms the eaves with a half-round gutter. The natural slated roof is low-pitched and hipped at the gable, with plain ridge and hip tiles. Downpipes are positioned on the gable. A chimney stack on the gable is constructed of grey and yellow brick with an overhanging capping and five chimney pots. A shared chimney stack stands between Numbers 1 and 2.

The basement area features a low rendered and painted wall with coping and simple metal railings and wall returns across both sides of the entrance bridge. Two windows similar to those above provide light to the basement, along with a door under the bridge. The gable is roughcast rendered and painted white, without openings but with a plinth. Gutters return across the gable with two downpipes.

The rear or south-east elevation, which commands views across the lower town and Ballycastle towards Fairhead, has a central back door with a rectangular fanlight, accessed by a bridge crossing the basement area. Double hung sliding sash 16-pane windows flank this door, with a similar centred window on the first floor above, though the centre window here is narrower. A continuous corbel course carries the gutter. All openings are trimmed with sandstone block bonded to the walls, with rusticated quoins defining each end of the façade. The roof is slated as before.

The rear basement area, wider than that at the front, is divided in two by the bridge to the door. Dogleg steps descend from the bridge on one side with a door access under the bridge. A low parapet wall with railings surrounds the basement area, and railings protect both sides of the bridge. A wall forms a balustrade to the basement steps. Two windows similar to the upper windows light the basement, and a plinth course defines the top of the basement.

The terrace is now secluded across a laneway from North Street on an elevated site. A street is formed on the west side with stone and partially encloses a small yard for each cottage opposite its corresponding residential unit. The gables of the stone stores form a wall defining one side of the street. The area in front of each cottage is paved with concrete and street gravel. Each end of the street is terminated by a wall with piers, one featuring a gateway for vehicles and the other for pedestrians. Each stone store with lean-to roof has two sheeted doors and stone walls. The stores now contain boilers for central heating with distribution pipes underground to the cottages. One side of the entrance laneway is bounded by a random rubble stone wall with piers at the North Street end.

The coastguard station was erected in 1868, probably to designs by E.T. Owen, assistant architect in the Irish Board of Public Works in Dublin, working under the direction of the board's principal architect, his brother J.H. Owen. E.T. Owen appears to have assumed responsibility for the design of coastguard stations from J.H. Owen in the mid-1860s. The station originally comprised five houses and a tower. The coastguard vacated the station around the 1960s, after which the buildings reverted to the Trustees of the Fullerton Estate. The coastguard station appears for the first time on the Ordnance Survey map of 1904. The earlier Ordnance Survey map of 1855 shows a coastguard station in a position nearer the sea, adjacent to the pier, with officer residences described in the 1830s as having "nothing in their architecture or appearance worthy of description".