36 Kerr Street, Portrush, Co. Antrim, BT56 8DQ

A three-bay three-storey rendered terraced townhouse with attic, built around 1860 and located on the east side of Kerr Street in Portrush, overlooking the harbour. The building is part of an important early Victorian waterfront terrace and displays the proportions and detailing typical of the mid-Victorian period, with architectural details of good quality that remain largely intact.

The main structure is square on plan with a two-storey return to the rear, a single-storey extension and a modern conservatory. An integral carriage-arch entry occupies the right bay. The pitched roof is covered with natural slate and angled ridge tiles, with a parapet to the front and three rendered chimneystack with tall clay pots. Roughcast render forms the walling, with smooth rendered straight quoins and a smooth rendered eaves band with moulded cornice. At the south gable, lime render covers masonry to ground floor level.

Windows throughout are six-over-six timber sash without horns, set in smooth surrounds with projecting stone sills topped by label moulds. The principal elevation faces west and is four openings wide to each floor, those above the carriage arch positioned slightly further to the right. The ground floor carriage-arch entrance features timber-sheeted gates. The focal point of this elevation is a four-panelled timber door to the centre, accessed via two stone steps and set within a panelled recess. The doorcase is flanked by panelled pilasters with decorative console brackets and crowned by a corniced canopy. Above the door is a transom light inscribed with "36".

The north elevation is abutted by the adjoining building. The east elevation features a two-storey return abutted to the centre by a single-storey extension. Three small skylights pierce the roof, and three windows light the second floor. At first floor to the right is a window, and to the left a panelled and glazed timber door with a three-pane sidelight. A modern conservatory occupies the ground floor to the right. The return is two openings wide to its north elevation. The south gable elevation is partially abutted by the adjoining building at second floor, with the upper section left blank. At ground floor is a four-panelled timber door.

The cast-iron half-round rainwater goods run to the rear, with parapet gutters to the front. Decorative cast-iron arrow-head railings on a stone plinth wall front the property, with scrolled ends and a central cast-iron post topped by a ball finial. The carriage arch entrance leads to a rear yard.

A row of two-storey rendered outbuildings runs to the rear of the terrace, each servicing one of the houses. These have slated roofs with terracotta ridge tiles. The outbuilding serving number 36 was converted into a garage in the early to mid-twentieth century, accessed from the east via double-leaf timber doors opening on a hinge, with a timber casement window above and a variety of timber casement windows and a timber-sheeted door to the right.

The terrace was built in 1859–60 as the fashionable bathing resort of Portrush experienced dramatic expansion following the arrival of the railway branch line from Coleraine in 1855. Originally named Clarence Terrace, the group of three houses first appeared in valuation records in 1859 as unfinished dwellings. The valuer described them as new houses "well built and tolerably well finished", built by Thomas Black. Number 36 was valued at £31, slightly more than its companions because of an attached shed. By 1863 all houses had acquired tenants, and by the 1870s the group had been renamed Charlotte Terrace.

The first recorded occupier of number 36 was James Watt in 1863, followed by Robert Crookshank in 1873. An addition to the property in 1872 increased the valuation to £33. Subsequent tenants included John Roe Watt (1879), Frederick H Watt (1881), Miss Elizabeth Browne (1897), Frances Lindsay, Carolyn Browne (1902) and Frederick H Watt (1905). Captain Frederick H Watt was a Justice of the Peace, County Councillor and Director of Portrush Harbour Company, and also worked as a steamboat agent.

By the 1901 census, the dwelling was operating as a boarding house run by Frances P Lindsay from County Louth, with a general domestic servant, Catherine Crossan, also resident along with a 47-year-old married woman and her son. The Jacksons, a mother and daughter, subsequently ran the boarding house with a live-in general domestic servant. In 1911 census records, the house was operating as a boarding house. The property passed to the McGugan family in 1923, and valuer's notes from the 1930s list the accommodation as comprising two reception rooms, eight bedrooms, a kitchen, scullery, pantry and WC, with a yearly rent of £65.

An extensive refurbishment was carried out in the early 1930s. The building was listed in 1977. In the late 1980s, work was undertaken on the doors, roof, staircase, chimneys and windows. The exterior railings were replaced in 1995, and in 2009 repairs and restoration took place to the windows.

The building is prominently sited on Kerr Street, street-fronted and overlooking Portrush harbour. The terrace of three houses forms one of the earliest surviving examples of Victorian waterfront development in the town and makes an important contribution to the historic character of Portrush.