Torr Head Signal Station, & Coastguard Houses, Cushendun, Co Antrim

Torr Head Signal Station and Coastguard Houses, Cushendun, County Antrim

This is a group of maritime structures at Torr Head on the County Antrim coast, comprising a single-storey signal station of probable late 19th or early 20th century construction and the ruinous remains of a terrace of four single-storey coastguard houses dating from the 1870s. The two elements are separate from one another — an unusual arrangement, since in most coastguard stations the watch house was built as part of the same block as the dwellings. Here the separation was almost certainly dictated by the exposed position of the headland and the difficulty of access to it. The buildings are recorded as derelict and are of industrial archaeological interest. Neither set of buildings is considered to be of particular architectural note, and both have suffered either inappropriate alteration or serious deterioration. Their chief interest lies in their historical associations, particularly their connections with Lloyd's of London and with Guglielmo Marconi's pioneering wireless telegraphy experiments.

Historical Background

A Revenue Station is known to have existed at Torr Head in 1730, established by the Government to combat smuggling and one of the earliest such stations in the province. The 1832 Ordnance Survey 6-inch map shows a signal staff at the summit of the headland, with several buildings on the shore of the bay immediately to the south. These are described in the 1834 First Valuation as a Water Guard dwelling and boathouse, likely developed from the earlier 18th century station. Although described as belonging to the Water Guard, that force had been placed under the direction of the Board of Customs since 1822, when it was renamed the Coastguard Force, and was one of a number of such stations then operating around the Ulster coast. The Coastguard Service passed to Admiralty control in 1856.

The Ordnance Survey 6-inch map of 1859 shows a Coastguard Watch House on the site of the former signal staff, and the nearby boathouse is also marked; both buildings appear in the Second Valuation of around 1860. The Valuation Revision entry for 1879 indicates that it was around this time that the coastguard houses to the east of the station were erected, and what had previously been the station became the watch house, with a station house added to the schedule. The Board of Public Works, which had taken over the construction and maintenance of coastguard stations in 1845, would have been responsible for this work. By the 1903 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, the station is captioned as the Coastguard Signal Station, with a flagstaff also shown along with the terrace of houses noted in the 1879 Valuation.

It was from Torr Head that the world was notified of the success of Marconi's pioneering wireless transmission between Rathlin Island and Ballycastle in 1898. Lloyd's, the London shipping insurance company, had until that point relied on pigeons and semaphore to relay sightings of ships passing through the North Channel from their watch station at Rathlin's East Light to Torr Head, from where messages were sent on by land line to their London headquarters. Marconi's demonstration offered the prospect of a more reliable method of communication between the island and the mainland. In 1906 the Coastguard entered into a formal agreement with Lloyd's whereby the station would also act as a signal station on the company's behalf. The Admiralty retained the right to exclusive use of the station in the event of war, and during the First World War Torr Head accordingly operated as a War Signal Station.

On 11 September 1920 the station and houses were raided for weapons by the IRA. The premises were evacuated on 23 September, and on 6 November the houses were gutted by an arsonist. The station was reoccupied by the Coastguard as a lookout during the Second World War. In the 1950s the Ministry of Defence attempted to establish a radar installation at the site, but this proved unsuccessful as aircraft were apparently able to fly low over the sea and evade detection. The station remained in coastguard use until the 1970s, after which it was sold and became a private dwelling. It has since been vacated and now lies derelict. HM Coastguard still maintain a radio aerial on the site.

Although the dwelling houses date from the 1870s, it is unclear precisely when the present signal station was built. The Ordnance Survey shows a watch house on the site in 1859, which had become a signal station by 1879. However, the use of mass concrete on the roof suggests a late 19th or, more probably, early 20th century refurbishment or complete rebuild. The Valuation revision records contain no indication of when this took place, and further research would be required in the Office of Public Works archives at the Public Record Office in Dublin.

The Signal Station

The signal station is reached by a steep unmade footpath from the car park at the end of the single-track road. It is a single-storey rectangular building aligned east to west. At the east end, facing the sea, there is a full-height canted bay; on the south wall there is a lower porch. Both the main part of the building and the porch are covered with flat reinforced-concrete slabs waterproofed with tar, edged with low red-brick parapets with projecting concrete copings. This arrangement was designed to collect rainwater, which drained through a cast-iron downpipe fixed to the north side of the wall into a cement-rendered concrete cistern in the yard; this cistern is now surmounted by a modern plastic tank. There are two red-brick chimneys, one over each internal party wall, both with concrete copings and terracotta stacks, the latter probably relatively modern. Towards the east side of the roof, just behind the bay extension, is a circular metal bracket on four legs, which probably once supported a flagpole that appears also to have been braced by cables attached to metal cleats still embedded in the ground on both sides of the building. A cast-iron stairway leads up to the roof on the east side of the porch.

The walls are now pebble-dashed, obscuring their original material, which is probably random rubble or brick. They sit on a projecting base with a chamfered red-brick top course. The quoins and door and window surrounds are trimmed with stepped red brick. All windows have flat brick heads and dressed sandstone cills. Although the wooden frames are now greatly decayed, enough survives to show that they had one-over-one panes, with a top-hung top panel and a side-hung bottom panel; these are in all probability much later replacements. Two stone steps lead up to the main entrance on the west wall of the porch. The door is of vertical vee tongue-and-groove boards, now clad in sheet metal. There is a single window on the south wall. To the left of the porch is a single window to the middle room, and on the west wall there is a pair of windows to the end room. On the north wall there is also a single light to the middle room. A former door at the left into the east room has been blocked and rendered over. The bay retains a window in each of its two side cants, though an extension has been added at the centre.

Just beyond and to the north side of the bay window is a small shed with concrete-block walls and a flat concrete roof, accessed by concrete steps down from either side. Each of its three sea-facing walls has a small rectangular light. Its style suggests a Second World War construction date; most recently it was used as a toilet cubicle. Immediately to its south is a low circular concrete block, now partly covered by the wooden extension to the bay end; metal lugs project from its top, but what was mounted on it and when is unknown.

Abutting the inside face of the station's boundary wall at the north-west is a small random rubble shed with a flat concrete roof, pebble-dashed walls, and red-brick quoins and door reveals. It is divided into two sections, one of which contains a dry toilet. This outbuilding first appears on the 1922 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, confirming it was erected after the previous 1903 edition.

The station is enclosed by a low random rubble basalt wall. The main entrance is a pedestrian gate on the landward side, from which a concrete footway leads to the building entrance. This gate has dressed square piers coped with red sandstone. A smaller gate along the north wall leads to concrete stairs on a random rubble base, descending to a field below the rocky outcrop on which the station stands. The maps indicate these stairs were also added between 1903 and 1922.

The Coastguard Houses

On the north side of the road leading towards the signal station stands a terrace of what were two-storey dwellings, now ruinous. Aligned north to south with its main facade facing west, the terrace comprises four identical single-bay units and a larger single-bay unit at the south end which projects forward from the main facade; this larger unit was undoubtedly the commanding officer's house. The terrace is accessed at the south-west through a gateway with square ashlar piers coped with sandstone. There is also a smaller entrance, now infilled, at the south-east corner of the yard wall.

The roof has entirely disappeared, most probably lost in the fire of 1920. The absence of gables indicates it was hipped. The walls are of coursed random rubble basalt over a projecting base edged with chamfered sandstone, and the external surfaces have been cement-dashed. Most of the terrace's east wall has collapsed. Each of the four smaller houses has a single window on each floor of the main facade, all with jambs and segmental heads of yellow brick with red-brick reveals, and chamfered sandstone cills. From what little remains, there appears also to have been a rear ground-floor door and window, and possibly at least one first-floor window. The internal masonry party walls survive, but all internal floors, stairs and any stud partitions have long gone.

The facade of the larger unit at the south end has, at ground floor, a door to the right and two windows to the left, all trimmed in the same manner as the windows of the other units. At first floor there is a single oriel window to the right and two standard windows to the left. The right gable has two windows on each floor, with that at top left being an oriel window matching the one on the facade. At the rear there is a ground-floor door with a concrete cistern just outside, and traces of a chimney flue on the inside face of this wall. Both oriel windows are of mass concrete, cast in situ, and are probably First World War additions.

A coursed random rubble wall encloses a large yard to the rear of the houses, against the inside face of whose east curtain wall are the ruinous remains of lean-to outbuildings.

On the shoreline of the bay to the south of the headland, the site of the 1830s coastguard houses is now occupied by two modern or refurbished houses and a small harbour with reinforced-concrete walls.