County Boundary Stone, 116 Gateside Road, Glebe, Ballywillian, BT56 8NP

County Boundary Stone, 116 Gateside Road, Glebe, Ballywillian

This is a small cast or stamped concrete boundary marker set on the grass verge at the west side of Gateside Road, approximately 2 kilometres south-southeast of Portrush. The stone measures roughly 300 by 600 by 150 millimetres and stands upright in its original location. A direction sign and road name sign are positioned immediately to the south-southeast, with a bus stop adjacent to the north-northwest. The base is not visible.

The front face bears cast or stamped lettering, approximately 25 to 35 millimetres high, reading "COUNTY BOUNDARY ANTRIM DERRY", with the horizontal text for Antrim and Derry interlaced with the vertical word Boundary, using the letters A and Y as connecting elements. The marker is lightly weathered and undamaged, though a small hole is evident at the centre of the top front surface.

This stone is one of six similar markers surviving along rural roadsides in the area north and west of Ballymoney and east and south of Coleraine, Portstewart and Portrush. All mark the land boundary between Counties Antrim and Londonderry, and in particular denote changes in direction of that boundary line. The exact date of these markers is uncertain, but their concrete construction and the styling of their inscriptions suggest they date from the very late 19th or early 20th century, possibly associated with the introduction of County Councils following the 1898 Local Government (Ireland) Act. Their origins appear to have been obscure by 1940, when a photograph of what seems to be this example appeared in the Belfast Telegraph on 21 May of that year, captioned as "A curious county boundary stone". This particular marker was recorded on Ordnance Survey maps for the first time in 1939. At least one other such stone once stood along Newbridge Road north-west of Ballymoney, but this was removed around 2020.