Craig Vara House, 5 Craig Vara Terrace, Portrush, Co. Antrim, BT56 8AJ

Craig Vara House is a symmetrical two-storey-with-attic detached house, now divided into apartments, built around 1840. It is situated prominently overlooking the Arcadia on the east side of Main Street in Portrush, accessed via a narrow street off Causeway Street that terminates at the house entrance and a public footpath to the beach.

The building is a three-bay composition of square plan with a gabled return to the rear. The exterior is painted roughcast render on a contrasting plinth with raised stepped quoins. The pitched natural slate roof features blue and black angled ridge tiles and rendered chimneyStacks to the gables, with cast-iron ogee rainwater goods on projecting eaves and square downpipes.

The principal northeast elevation has three openings at each floor. Windows are replacement 6/6 timber sash with projecting painted sills and label moulds. Three modern gabled dormers have been added to the attic. A decorative dentilled pediment with smooth rendered frieze sits high above the central first-floor window. The ground floor contains a replacement doorcase and portico comprising two fluted columns on a granite base supporting a timber-sheeted canopy. A double-leaf timber panelled door, accessed via two granite steps, has sidelights over apron panels and a transom light etched with the lettering "Craigvara House".

The southeast gable has two windows at each floor, including 2/2 sash windows to the attic. A full-height gabled return extends to the right, with a window to the right and a diminutive window to the left at each floor. The northwest gable also has two windows at each floor. The southwest rear elevation was partially concealed at the time of listing.

The site is bounded by a roughcast rendered wall with painted coping stone and painted square gate piers with pointed caps supporting modern steel gates.

The house is first recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853 with outbuildings to the rear and a porch to the front. At the time of Griffith's Valuation (1856–64), the occupier was Alexander Knox, who rented the furnished house from Miss Rebecca Rice at £60 per annum. Rebecca Rice was a member of the Church of Ireland congregation commemorated by a window in Holy Trinity Church and donated a baptismal font to the church in 1870. The house and two-storey return, together with two outbuildings (double and single-storey), were valued at £32.

A succession of occupiers followed, including William A Young, Sarah Richardson (1883), Richard Robinson MD (1886), Joseph Cunningham (1891), Richard Cunningham (1894), and Blanche H Wilson, recorded at the 1901 census as a 54-year-old widow from England living with her two daughters, one working as a hospital nurse. The family employed an 18-year-old maidservant, Agnes Quigg from Aghadoey. An advertisement in the Belfast Newsletter of 1900 promoted the house as a summer let with "two receptions, seven bedrooms, bath, stabling, unobstructed sea view".

By the 1911 census, the property was operating as a boarding house with 13 rooms, designated first class. The tenant, Joseph McLarnon, aged 32, was a draper's assistant living with his Scottish wife, and they employed a general domestic servant.

In 1913, the valuation was raised to £48 when the front elevation was raised by approximately one foot and dormer windows were fitted to make the attic habitable. The dentilled pediment positioned above the central second-floor window rendered the altered proportions more harmonious. Valuation notes from this period record a porch of wood and lead, a scullery return to the rear, and various outbuildings including a coalhouse, water closet, outhouse and larder, and a stable with two bedrooms above used in summer (all now demolished). The ground floor contained dining and drawing rooms, kitchen, pantry, scullery and water closet. The first floor had five bedrooms and a bathroom. The second floor contained five bedrooms. Electric bells had been fitted to the door, dining and drawing rooms.

The building was owned by the Browne sisters in the 1930s and 1940s and continued in use as a boarding house. In 1951, the stable was altered to provide three bedrooms and a bathroom, with the ground floor used as a playroom and washhouse. In 1953, a dance hall was erected nearby, prompting the owners to lodge complaints regarding obstruction to their view and nuisance caused by noise and late-night patrons.

The house was listed in 1977. Much of the original internal character has been degraded through refurbishment and conversion to modern apartments. In 2001, the building was restored and converted into six apartments by Patton Homes Ltd. Despite these changes, Craig Vara House remains one of the best surviving examples of a mid-nineteenth-century Victorian waterfront house in Portrush and is of architectural and historic interest to the local community.