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

37 Kerr Street is a mid-Victorian terraced townhouse built around 1860, located on the east side of Kerr Street in Portrush, overlooking the harbour. It is a Grade B1 listed building of significant architectural and historic interest, forming part of a terrace of three houses that represents one of the earliest surviving examples of Victorian waterfront development in the town.

The building is two bays and three storeys with an attic, square on plan, with a two-storey return and single-storey flat-roof extension to the rear. The walling is roughcast render with smooth rendered straight quoins and an eaves band featuring a moulded cornice. The pitched natural slate roof has angled ridge tiles and a parapet, with a rendered chimneystack bearing tall clay pots and cast-iron half-round rainwater goods to the rear.

The principal elevation faces west and is three openings wide at each floor. Windows are replacement uPVC in smooth surrounds with projecting stone sills, each surmounted by a label mould. The entrance features a bolection-moulded four-panelled timber door to the left, accessed by three concrete steps and surmounted by a plain transom light, flanked by panelled pilasters with a corniced canopy on decorative console brackets. The north and south gables are abutted by adjoining buildings. The east elevation contains three small skylights to the roof and two windows at the second floor. A two-storey return extends to the right, with two windows to the upper floors over a modern flat-roof extension. Both the extension and return contain modern folding doors with a window to the first floor above.

A row of rendered outbuildings runs to the rear of the terrace, serving each house, with slated roofs and terracotta ridge tiles. The building formerly associated with number 37 has been converted into a garage with replacement timber casement windows and a modern up-and-over garage door. The front is enclosed by decorative cast-iron arrow-head railings on a stone plinth wall.

The terrace, originally named Clarence Terrace, was built in 1859-60 by Thomas Black as Portrush expanded following the arrival of the railway branch line from Coleraine in 1855. The houses first appear in valuation records as unfinished dwellings in 1859, described as "new houses well built and tolerably well finished", valued at £30 each. By 1863 all three houses had acquired tenants. The terrace was subsequently renamed Charlotte Terrace in the 1870s.

Number 37 had Samuel McClintock as its first recorded occupant in 1863, followed by James Hannay (1872), John R Meath (1874), and Miss McClintock (1879). In 1884 the house briefly served as the police barrack for Portrush, returning to domestic use in 1889 when it became the home of Matilda Bryan. By the 1890s it was listed in valuation records as Marine House. From 1897 it was the home of Captain F H Watt, a County Councillor and Director of Portrush Harbour Company, also a steamboat agent and coal merchant. In 1901 Watt lived there with his sisters and two domestic servants. By 1911 his sisters occupied the ten-room house with their cousin and a domestic servant; the older sister, Mary, was working as a clerk and the house was designated first class. Valuation notes from the 1930s record accommodation comprising two receptions, seven bedrooms, a kitchen, scullery, and WC. The Watt family remained resident for some years, and in the 1940s and 1950s the house is listed as the property of J R Watt & Son. The building was listed in 1977. The interior has since been thoroughly modernised and the windows replaced, though the house remains in domestic use.