3 Coast Road, Gates, Railings and Walling, Cushendall, Co.Antrim

3 Coast Road, Cushendall — Former Rectory with Gates, Railings and Walling

This is a symmetrical detached three-bay two-and-a-half-storey rendered former dwelling, built around 1850 and originally known as Cushendall House. It stands on the south side of Coast Road within its own grounds on an elevated site on the east bank of the River Dall, facing north.

Architectural Description

The building has a pitched natural slate roof to the front and artificial slate to the rear pitch, with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles, lead valleys, and rendered profiled chimneystacks to either end, each topped with octagonal black clay pots. Three gabled dormer windows project from the front pitch, with uPVC-clad cheeks and console brackets to the gablets. Replacement steel rainwater goods serve the bracketed overhanging eaves at either gable end.

The front elevation is finished in painted ruled-and-lined render with rendered quoins and a projecting plinth course. The remaining elevations are painted rough-cast render. Window openings throughout are square-headed with painted masonry sills, decorative stucco surrounds, and uPVC replacement windows.

The front elevation is symmetrically arranged across three bays over two storeys. At its centre sits a square-plan flat-roofed entrance porch with a bitumen-covered roof, a full-span cornice and frieze supported on Doric corner piers. The door opening is to the right cheek of the porch, with an architrave surround and a replacement hardwood panelled door. The window openings on the front elevation have architrave surrounds with bracketed sills; the first-floor windows are further enriched with pediments supported on scrolled console brackets.

The single-bay east side elevation has an architrave surround and bracketed sill to the first-floor window only. The rear elevation extends upward to form a large gable and is abutted by a steel fire escape; it has central square-headed door openings to the first and second floors, fitted with uPVC glazed doors. The two-bay two-storey west side elevation has window surrounds matching those of the front, plus a single square-headed door opening to the left with a replacement architrave surround and uPVC door.

Setting and Boundaries

The house is set back slightly from the south side of Coast Road on an elevated plot. A small cobblelock forecourt is enclosed by a replacement rendered wall with steel railings, anchored at either end by original panelled red sandstone ashlar piers with moulded capstones. To the rear, a bitmac-paved yard is enclosed to the south by a two-storey former range of outbuildings with a pitched artificial slate roof, uPVC rainwater goods, rough-cast rendered walling, square-headed window openings with concrete sills, uPVC windows, and hardwood doors. A rear garden on a steep gradient abuts the back of the former outbuildings and is accessed via a flight of concrete steps adjacent to the northeast pier; it is enclosed to the road by a rough-cast rendered retaining wall with steel railings.

History

The building was first recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1857, which shows it in its current layout as a square-shaped dwelling with a large return and a rear outbuilding. The map identifies it as Cushendall House. Griffith's Valuation of 1859 valued it at £25 and recorded it as leased by Henry Hugh McNeill, a magistrate and prominent local landowner who resided at Parkmount in Belfast, to a Ms Henrietta Frances Baker. Baker lived at Cushendall House until her death in 1871, after which her daughter, Ms Frances Eliza Young, took possession of the property.

Around 1875, the Annual Revisions record that the building became the rectory for Layde Parish Church, occupied by the Reverend William Thompson. It continued in use as the parish rectory until at least the 1970s, with a succession of occupants. The 1911 Census of Ireland records the Reverend Thomas Edward Thorpe in residence and describes the building as a first-class dwelling of ten rooms, with extensive outbuildings to the rear including a stable and coach house, two cow houses, a piggery, a turf house, and a potato house. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) increased the rateable value to £29 and recorded the building as owned by the Representative Church Body, with the Reverend Thomas G. Sharpe as occupant. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the total rateable value had risen to £34.

In 1972 the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society described the building in the following terms: "a rather heavy three-bay stucco building, two-storey with attic; originally probably a summer residence of the 1840s; rather clumsy pedimented aedicules to the windows; porch; quoins; glazing-bars complete." The rectory was included in the Cushendall Conservation Area in 1975 — only the second conservation area to have been designated in the province at that time, chosen as one of Northern Ireland's four pilot schemes for conservation during the European Architectural Heritage Year — and was subsequently listed in 1976.

Comprehensive repair works were carried out around 1981, including repairs to the porch, chimneys, and roof. Further general repairs followed around 1990, at which time the building is likely to have been subdivided into self-contained apartments; it is now converted into four flats, with an additional two flats in the converted outbuildings to the rear yard. A single-storey extension to the west gable was constructed around 2003.

Despite the extent of modern alterations — including window and door replacements and the conversion to flats — the building retains considerable social and local importance as the village rectory for approximately one hundred years of its life.