Arcadia, 6 Craig Vara, Portrush, Co. Antrim, BT56 8BN

Arcadia is a symmetrical detached two-storey former bathing house, stucco-fronted and pedimented, built around 1936 to the designs of local architect A.J. Clarke. It sits on a rocky outcrop — Ryan Rock — on the east strand of the Portrush peninsula, between two beaches. It was extensively renovated around 2000, when a two-storey extension was added to the east, and is currently in use as a coastal café. Despite the loss of its original windows and some partial demolition, three of its four elevations retain well-proportioned and elaborately detailed facades, and the building remains an iconic presence on the Portrush seafront.

Architectural Description

The building is rectangular on plan and encircled by a cantilevered concrete terrace that extends to the southeast as a children's play area. The roof is hipped and clad in natural slate with synthetic ridge tiles, bowing outward at the north elevation and over the extension. Rainwater is carried by ogee-moulded cast-iron guttering fixed to a modillioned eaves cornice, with square-profile cast-iron downpipes. The walls are finished in painted stucco render with a projecting plinth course, clasping corner pilasters, and a continuous cornice over the ground floor. Window openings are square-headed with moulded sills and replacement uPVC windows throughout.

The symmetrical west front elevation is three windows wide with a central pedimented bay and a glazed canted entrance porch added around 2000. An open-bed pediment rises from two-tier pilasters that frame a semi-circular first-floor window opening fitted with a hood moulding and an elaborate scrolling cartouche. The pilasters and corner piers are flat-panelled: the ground-floor piers have disc mouldings to the capitals, while the first-floor capitals take the form of a cartouche and margent flanked by strapped fasces, a motif repeated on the corner piers. First-floor windows have lugged and kneed architrave surrounds with stepped keystones, while elsewhere window surrounds are plain, with I-beam steel mullions to the windows and porch.

The bowed north side elevation is three windows wide. The ground floor has square-headed window openings; the first floor has oculi set in vertical moulded panels. These oculi have elongated stepped keystones flanked by margents and are set within a moulding that sits above a flat panel dropping down to the ground-floor window, which carries a block keystone.

The symmetrical east rear elevation was rebuilt around 2000, replacing a former dance hall structure that previously abutted it. A double-height bowed extension clad in glazed brick occupies the upper floor; the remainder of this elevation is plain walling with plain windows.

The three-sided canted south side elevation is entirely blind, with each plane defined by pilasters as described above. Each plane also features a central open-bed segmental pediment and a blind panel at each level with moulded surrounds.

Setting

The building sits on a rocky outcrop with a concrete foundation. A cantilevered concrete terrace projects northwards with stainless steel railings dating from around 2000. The terrace extends to the southeast, where a concrete children's playground is enclosed by a concrete wall.

Historical Background

Portrush grew as a seaside resort from at least the 1830s, attracting visitors to its two-mile beach and the nearby Giant's Causeway, and was marketed as the "Brighton of Ireland." An 1857 isometric map of the town records no built structure on Ryan Rock, the site on which Arcadia now stands. By 1905, a small shop on the site was recorded in the valuation records with a rateable value of just £5. By 1913 this had risen to £52, reflecting a more permanent structure erected by town councillor and local businessman Robert A. Chalmers, which extended the commercial activities at Craigvara to include tearooms and bathing boxes. Chalmers was in partnership with building contractor J. Campbell Jr until the late 1920s, running a confectionery and grocery business.

A photograph from 1911 shows a single-storey brick building already on the site, with two windows on the west elevation flanking a glazed bay, a canted bay window on the south elevation, and a balustraded flat roof reportedly used for summer evening dances. Attached to it was a two-storey brick building comprising a castellated tower over the entrance giving access to the various amenities, and an element with a pitched roof and timber-framed gable set over a segmental-arched window above a canted-bay shop window. The detached bathing boxes, shown on the valuation map of 1897 to 1916, stood to the east and southeast of the building. Landscape gardens sloping up to Causeway Street included a central cast-iron fountain dated 1911, adapted from designs for Pompeian lamp-brackets.

The site continued to trade under these uses into the 1930s, with Campbell and Chalmers as occupiers. By 1935 the leasehold had been divided into three: Margaret A. Martin became the lessor of no. 7 Craig Vara, occupied by Campbell and Chalmers running tearooms and bathing boxes at a rateable value of £90; Mrs Richardson separately leased a kiosk numbered 7a to Campbell and Chalmers for £15 10s.; and an unspecified number of amusement kiosks owned by Campbell and Chalmers but occupied by Ernest Barry were numbered 7b at the same rateable value.

In 1936 major building works were carried out to plans drawn up by A.J. Clarke, commissioned by Messrs. Campbell and Chalmers, and for the first time the building acquired the name Arcadia. The west elevation's aesthetic, with its pitched roof, has been noted as bearing similarities to another prominent coastal building, Seaport Lodge in Portballintrae, built around 1770. The 1936 plans show the ground floor containing a café with orchestra bay, a shop selling toys, confectionery, and pastries, and a soda fountain. The first floor housed a coffee and smoke room and a dance hall, with a refreshment area with open snugs in the basement. The rateable value for the shop, tearooms, kiosks, and bathing boxes rose to £175. When a ballroom was added and the bathing boxes removed in 1939, the rateable value increased to £400. Ernest Barry continued to occupy amusement kiosks at 7a Craig Vara, leased from Campbell and Chalmers. A literary source also records that an area to the southwest of Arcadia was once used as an outdoor theatre space, with the seascape as its backdrop, a feature it shares with the Minack Theatre in Porthcurno, Cornwall.

In the 1950s, the then lessor Daniel Hall Christie took on the whole site with F.G. Blundell as occupier. Blundell is credited with extending the complex by adding a large ballroom adjoining the original structure to the southeast, capable of accommodating 1,600 people, with an outside balcony overlooking the dance floor off its refreshment area; this balcony was later enclosed. By this time the castellated and gabled elements of the earlier building had been altered to give the building a fashionably Modernistic appearance, and its fenestration had been drastically changed. During the early 1950s David Glover and his orchestra were frequent performers, and summer seasons brought Joe Loss and his band, Andy Stewart, and Robert Wilson to the stage. The rateable value rose to £1,200 before falling back to £1,065 between 1956 and 1972.

The ballroom's heyday appears to have ended after 1976, when it ceases to appear in the valuation records. By that point the rateable value of £1,800 was attributed to a restaurant; eight kiosks commanded £1,700 in 1981; a flat was valued at £200 in 1978; and three stores at £450, also in 1978. Arcadia has been described as a "Mannerist stucco palais, worthy of the promenade at Nice." The current footprint has been reduced to a single building incorporating a two-storey segmental bay to the north and a canted two-storey bay to the south, with the semi-circular two-storey extension to the east. The 1930s pilaster piers, string courses, and modillioned cornice survive, along with the first-floor architraves and keystones. To the southeast, the footprint of the 1950s ballroom has been replaced by an outdoor paddling pool and children's play area.