3 Cliff Terrace, Castlerock, Co. Londonderry, BT51 4RQ

3 Cliff Terrace, Castlerock

A terraced single-bay one-and-a-half-storey stone cottage, built around 1875 as one of twelve similar houses designed by Frederick Henry Godwin for Sir William Harvey Bruce. The terrace, known locally as the 'Twelve Apostles', is set on an elevated site overlooking the sea to the west of Castlerock and is entered from a street-fronted position with a paved rear patio and garden.

The building is rectangular on plan facing north. It retains its distinctive steeply pitched natural slate roof with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles, deep overhanging eaves with timber sheeting and exposed timber beams supported by two stop-chamfered timber brackets on sandstone corbels, and tall rendered chimneystack to the east shared with the adjoining house. A pair of dormer windows to the front pitch, that to the west shared with adjoining house No. 4, have hipped slate roofs, timber pinnacles and replacement timber casement windows. The replacement metal guttering is supported on a timber fascia.

The original basalt stone walling, constructed from local basalt with tooled sandstone ashlar dressings, is random coursed rock-faced with cement pointing. The front elevation features a single square-headed window opening formed in a stop-chamfered dressed sandstone surround with sandstone sill, fitted with replacement timber casement windows. A segmental-headed recessed entrance porch, shared with No. 4, has a stop-chamfered dressed sandstone surround and keystone. The square-headed door opening is set at a right angle to the facade with a replacement sheeted timber door. The porch has a clay tiled floor and opens onto a large worn sandstone step with a slightly raised area laid in cobbles running the entire length of the terrace. The east elevation is abutted by adjoining house No. 2, and the west elevation by adjoining house No. 4.

The building has been extensively renovated and extended to the rear, with a two-storey gable-ended extension and a further flat-roofed single-storey extension built around 2009. Despite these modern extensions and replacement fenestration, the building retains the distinctive character of the original design.

The cottages were originally built to house estate workers. Each was arranged with a single room on the ground floor serving as a kitchen, with a washhouse and scullery to the rear, whilst a staircase led to the upper floor where space was partitioned to form two small bedrooms. A separate single-storey washhouse stood in the rear yard, and water supply had to be carried from a pump. By the early 1930s the houses had remained largely unaltered from their original construction. Since the 1960s and 1970s the majority have been extended and refurbished internally.

Frederick Henry Godwin, a nephew of the better-known architect Edward William Godwin, is little documented. Only three local structures are attributed to him, with this terrace being his last known work before he moved to England around 1890, where he is thought to have designed additions to Westburton House, Gloucestershire. The terrace is described as 'recently erected' in the Irish Builder of February 1882, though construction appears to have taken place some years earlier. The terrace is first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1906. The houses were entered into the valuation fieldbook between 1873 and 1878 when all were inhabited and valued at £2 5s. The valuation was reduced to £1 10s in 1887, with rent recorded at 10 pence per week in that year. By the 1901 census all houses were designated as second class, and tenants leased their properties from the Hervey Bruce estate.

The terrace greatly contributes to the late nineteenth-century character of Castlerock, representing an English architectural design in an Irish setting.