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

3 Old Coastguard Cottages is one of a terrace of houses forming part of a former coastguard station of mid-Victorian date, designed by an important Irish architectural office. Despite some alterations to the exterior and setting, the building retains significant architectural and historical interest, and holds considerable group value with the other former coastguard houses.

The complex comprises a two-storey terrace including a former cottage for a commanding officer and six cottages for ranks, with an off-centre tower and small outhouses arranged across an entrance street. Opposite each unit stands a small enclosed yard with a lean-to roofed store. The terrace is reached by a laneway from North Street and sits freestanding within its grounds, though these have been substantially diminished by later development. The cottages have slated roofs with hips; the tower is flat roofed with a high parapet wall.

Number 3 is two bays wide and two storeys. The exterior street elevation mirrors that of Number 2 but handed. The south-east rear elevation is similarly arranged, except the door is glazed and subdivided into two panes with an undivided fanlight. The entrance door is sheeted with a small glazed panel subdivided into two panes and a rectangular plain fanlight, approached by two steps. To the right of the door is a small window lighting a cloakroom behind. To the left stands a double-hung sliding sash window with 12 panes. At first-floor level is a similar window directly above, though of lesser height. Door and windows are set in sandstone blockbonded into the wall, finished with roughcast rendering painted white. Metal gutter and round downpipe, slated roof, and grey and yellow back-moulded chimney stacks complete the street elevation. The rear or south-east elevation features a glazed door subdivided into two panes with a shallow fanlight, coupled with a double-hung sliding sash window with 12 panes. Four steps rise to the door. At first-floor level sits a two-light double-hung sliding sash window with eight panes, centred over the door and window below. The wall is finished in roughcast painted white, with door and window trimmed in sandstone. A plinth and corbel eave course with gutter and single downpipe complete the elevation, with a slated roof above.

The coastguard station was erected in 1868, originally comprising five houses and a tower, probably designed by E.T. Owen, assistant architect in the Irish Board of Public Works in Dublin, 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 was vacated by the coastguard around the 1960s, and the buildings subsequently reverted to the Trustees of the Fullerton Estate. The individual residential units are shown in reverse order on the Ordnance Survey plan number 8-8SE published in 1987.

This coastguard station appears for the first time on the Ordnance Survey map of 1904. Prior to that, the Ordnance Survey map of 1855 shows a coastguard station positioned nearer to the sea, adjacent to the pier. The residences of the officers of that earlier coastguard station were described in the 1830s as having "without anything in their architecture or appearance worthy of description".