Washhouse, Adjacent to Nos 3-6 Coastguard Cottages, Causeway View Lane, Portrush, Co Antrim, BT56 8DA

Washhouse and Attached Outbuildings, Former Coastguard Station, Portrush

This single-storey wash house and its attached outbuildings form part of a former Coastguard station built in 1896. They are located to the immediate east of Nos. 3-6 Coastguard Cottages, in the yards serving those four dwellings.

The wash house is a brick-built structure with a pitched roof finished in natural slate and grey fireclay ridge tiles. The roof runs at right angles to the adjoining rooms, presenting a gable to the west front façade. A brick chimneystack with a corbelled cap and clay pots rises to the rear of the ridge. The eaves have no overhang and feature a flush timber eaves fascia, set approximately 600mm higher than the adjoining outbuildings.

The west wall of the wash house advances forward, revealing side walls to the north and south. The north side wall has a flat-headed doorway with a timber sheeted door and flat-arched brick lintel. The west wall contains two flat-arched window openings fitted with painted timber 6/6 sash frames, with flat-arched brick lintels and painted cut stone sills.

The attached outbuildings have rendered walls with flat-arched doorways fitted with timber sheeted doors, and slated mono-pitched roofs.

Internally, the wash house contains a communal washhouse and a series of small rooms. Nos. 3-6 Coastguard Cottages are each allocated two of these rooms: one originally served as a fuel store and the other as an outside WC. All rooms are now used as stores or junk rooms. There are six rooms on the north side and two on the south side.

The Coastguard station of which these buildings form part replaced an earlier pre-1857 station. A Board of Works tender notice for the new construction appeared in August 1892, with valuations first referencing the new station in progress in 1896. Building costs amounted to approximately £2,500, though the architect's identity is not known. The wash house and its outbuildings specifically served Nos. 3-6, which were smaller dwellings probably intended for lower-ranking officers.

Following the transfer of the Coastguard to the Board of Trade in 1923 and subsequent staff reductions, Nos. 3-6 began to be rented to private individuals from that date, with freeholds sold off later in the century. The outbuildings likely ceased their original use during the mid-20th century when indoor WCs and washing facilities were introduced into the dwellings themselves.

The wash house is of particular architectural and group value as part of the surviving Coastguard estate. The retention of these ancillary buildings enhances the heritage interest of the former station complex as a whole, representing a good example of late-Victorian Coastguard accommodation provision in the province.