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

5 Old Coastguard Cottages is one of a terrace of seven units (comprising a cottage for the commanding officer and six cottages for ranks) forming part of a former coastguard station of mid-Victorian date erected in 1868. The station was designed by E.T. Owen, assistant architect in the Irish Board of Public Works in Dublin, working under the direction of the board's principal architect, his brother J.H. Owen. E.T. Owen had taken over responsibility for the design of coastguard stations from J.H. Owen in the mid-1860s. The complex also includes an off-centre tower and small outhouses positioned across an entrance street, with an enclosed yard and lean-to roofed store opposite each residential unit. The terrace is reached by a laneway from North Street and stands freestanding within its grounds, though these have been substantially reduced by later development.

Number 5 is two bays wide. The building is two storeys tall with a slated roof with hips. The entrance door is positioned away from the tower and features a rectangular fanlight with a small window to its right. Between the door and tower is a double hung sliding sash window with 12 panes; directly above at first floor is another double hung sliding sash 12 pane window of lesser height. Over the door is a much smaller 6 pane window with the top two panes forming a hinged vent designed to resemble a double hung sliding sash. All openings are trimmed with sandstone. Set close to the tower are two slit windows, unglazed and blank, at each floor. The wall is roughcast rendered and painted, with a continuous corbel and gutter affixed and a single downpipe. The south-east wall has a glazed door with 5 panes and a double hung sliding sash 12 pane window on the ground floor, with a 2 light double hung sliding sash 8 pane window above. Two blank slits similar to those on the north-west wall appear next to the tower. Each opening on this elevation has rendering applied in imitation of sandstone, the scratch coat only being applied. The wall is finished in roughcast and painted with a slight plinth, corbel as before, gutter, single downpipe and slated roof. The outhouse and yard have been renovated and paved.

The coastguard station was vacated circa 1960s and the buildings subsequently reverted to the Trustees of the Fullerton Estate. The 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 in a position nearer to the sea, adjacent to the pier; the residences of officers at that earlier station were described in the 1830s as being "without anything in their architecture or appearance worthy of description". Despite some alterations to the exterior and setting, the building retains considerable architectural and historical interest and possesses significant group value with the other former coastguard houses on the site.