Rose Cottage/Bayview, 19 / 21 Beach Road, Portballintrae, Bushmills, Co Antrim, BT57 8RT

Rose Cottage/Bayview, 19/21 Beach Road, Portballintrae, comprises a pair of single-storey houses facing west over Portballintrae Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, located approximately two miles north-west of Bushmills by road. The buildings date from between 1820 and 1839.

The houses are set at an angle to the roadway and fronted by small lawns interspersed with pieces of polygonal basalt. The finish is roughcast and whitened. The roofs are thatched between cement skews, with two rows of scallops at the ridge and one at the eaves. Each gable rises to a corbel-topped chimneystack, and there are two further stacks on the ridgeline. The roof spaces are lighted by small plain windows in the gables.

Entry to the houses is by means of timber-sheeted half doors furnished with decorative hinges, latches, postal flaps and yale locks. The front elevation is lit by four 12-pane casement windows—one on either side of each entrance—with narrow sills. A building matching the present structure is shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1832/33.

The southern part of the property has been substantially altered to provide modern living accommodation. The rear elevation includes vertically sliding windows with plain sashes and a panelled door glazed in the upper part. A bedroom/bathroom extension with a flat roof and deep timber fascia is lit by modern timber windows finished in stain. A pitched roof garage obscures much of the rear. Between this and the main house stands a kitchen extension, entered by a timber-sheeted half door, of similar construction to the bedroom extension. A window on the wall face between the projections comprises two lights, each 2x3 panes.

The pegged thatch documented during the First Survey of historic buildings in Northern Ireland in March 1972 was confirmed by Alan Gailey in 1976 as a classic example characteristic of North Antrim and a small part of County Galway, executed in a hybrid form. Re-thatching was carried out in 1977. Extensions and a garage at the rear were erected following a planning application in 1983, completed in 1984. Preservation efforts have concentrated on maintaining the appearance of the front elevation in a manner typical of vernacular thatched buildings.