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

5 Cliff Terrace is a terraced single-bay one-and-a-half-storey stone former labourer's cottage, built around 1875 as one of twelve houses designed by architect Frederick Henry Godwin for Sir William Harvey Bruce. The terrace is known locally as the 'Twelve Apostles' and stands on an elevated site overlooking the sea to the west of Castlerock.

The house is rectangular on plan, facing north, with a flat-roofed extension added to the rear around 1980. The exterior is constructed of random coursed rock-faced basalt walling with tooled sandstone ashlar dressings and cement pointing. The steeply pitched roof is covered in natural slate with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles. A tall rendered chimneystack to the east is shared with the adjoining house. Two dormer windows to the front pitch feature hipped slate roofs, timber pinnacles, and original timber casement windows with plain glazing; the western dormer is shared with the neighbouring property. Deep overhanging eaves with timber sheeting are supported by two stop-chamfered timber brackets mounted on sandstone corbels. Ogee-moulded cast-iron guttering is supported on a timber fascia.

The front elevation contains a single square-headed window opening with a stop-chamfered dressed sandstone surround, sandstone sill, and original four-light timber window frame with plain glazing. The window retains its original timber frame, though the latticed glazing has been replaced. A segmental-headed recessed entrance porch with painted stop-chamfered dressed sandstone surround and keystone is shared with No. 6. The porch has a square-headed door opening set at a right angle to the facade, fitted with an original sheeted timber door and iron door furniture. The porch floor is laid in clay tiles and opens onto a slightly raised cobbled area running the length of the terrace.

Godwin, a nephew of the better-known architect Edward William Godwin, is little documented but is credited with only three local structures, the Cliff Terrace being his final work before he moved to England around 1890. The terrace first appeared on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1906, though construction occurred some years earlier. The Irish Builder described the terrace as "recently erected" in February 1882, and it was entered into the valuation fieldbook between 1873 and 1878, with all houses valued at £2 5s. Girvan observed that the terrace represents "an English design in an Irish setting".

Each cottage originally consisted of a single room on the ground floor with a washhouse or scullery to the rear, accessed by a staircase leading to the upper floor where space was partitioned into two small bedrooms. The houses were built for estate workers, though not all tenants were employed by the Hervey Bruce family. Valuation dropped to £1 10s in 1887, with weekly rent at 10 pence. At the 1901 census, all houses were designated second-class three-room dwellings. The first recorded tenant at number five was James Gillespie. By 1901, the occupier was Jane Gillespie, a widow of 80 who kept house and cared for her grandchildren. She was living on the newly-introduced old-age pension by 1911, then aged 90. By the early 1930s, the buildings retained their original configuration with kitchen on the ground floor, two small bedrooms upstairs, a separate single-storey washhouse in the rear yard, and water supplied from a pump. Rents then ranged from 6 shillings to 8 shillings and 8 pence per month. Since the 1960s and 1970s, most houses have been extended to the rear and refurbished internally.

The stone used was local basalt with fine-grained freestone dressings for doors and windows. The building retains much of its original character and stands as one of the better examples on the terrace. The setting comprises street-frontage with paved rear patio and garden. The terrace greatly contributes to the late nineteenth-century character of Castlerock.