1 Cliff Terrace, Castlerock, Co. Londonderry, BT51 4RQ

1 Cliff Terrace is an end-of-terrace single-bay one-and-a-half-storey stone former labourer's cottage, built around 1875 as one of twelve identical houses designed by architect Frederick Henry Godwin for Sir William Harvey Bruce. The building is rectangular on plan, facing north, with a large extension to the east and rear built around 2002.

The cottage retains its distinctive steeply pitched natural slate roof with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles, half-hipped to the east. A tall rendered chimneystack with clay pots rises from the east gable. Two dormer windows punctuate the front pitch—the one to the west shared with the adjoining house—each with a hipped slate roof, timber pinnacles and replacement hardwood casement windows. The deep overhanging eaves are supported by a single stop-chamfered timber bracket on a sandstone corbel, with ogee-moulded cast-iron guttering and a cast-iron downpipe returning to the east gable.

The walls are constructed of random coursed rock-faced basalt with tooled sandstone ashlar dressings and cement pointing. The east gable extends to eaves level with sandstone ashlar dressings. Window openings are square-headed, formed in stop-chamfered dressed sandstone surrounds with sandstone sills and replacement hardwood windows. The front elevation contains a single window opening and a segmental-headed recessed entrance porch with stop-chamfered dressed sandstone surround and keystone. The porch, now blocked up, features a clay tiled floor and a large worn sandstone step opening onto a slightly raised cobbled area that runs the entire length of the terrace. The east gable is detailed similarly to the front elevation with a single landscape window opening to the ground floor and a pair of diminutive window openings at attic level with replica sandstone surrounds. The rear elevation is abutted by a recent two-bay extension set back from the east gable, duplicating the material detailing of the original terrace. The west gable is abutted by the adjoining house.

Originally built to house estate workers, the cottage initially contained a single room on the ground floor with a washhouse or scullery to the rear, while a staircase led to the upper floor where space was partitioned to form two bedrooms. By the early 1930s the layout comprised a kitchen on the ground floor with two small bedrooms upstairs, plus a separate single-storey washhouse in the rear yard. Water was carried from an external pump. Since the 1960s and 1970s, most houses in the terrace have been extended to the rear and refurbished internally; number one has received a particularly large side extension.

The terrace, known locally as the 'Twelve Apostles', is first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1906, though the houses date from around 1875. They were described as 'recently erected' in the Irish Builder of February 1882. The houses were entered into the valuation fieldbook between 1873 and 1878, valued initially at £2 5 shillings, reduced to £1 10 shillings in 1887 with rent recorded as 10 pence per week. By the early 1930s rents varied from 6 shillings to 8 shillings 8 pence per month. The first recorded tenant was William Stewart; by the 1901 census the occupier was James Swann, a railway porter with his wife and four small children; by 1911 it was Robert Tosh, a farm labourer with his wife and three children. At the time of the 1901 census the three-room houses were designated second class.

Frederick Henry Godwin, a nephew of the better-known architect Edward William Godwin, is little known and has only three local structures attributed to him, this terrace being the last. He moved to England around 1890 and is thought to have designed additions to Westburton House in Gloucestershire. The design has been noted as 'an English design in an Irish setting'. The stone used was local basalt with fine-grained freestone dressings to doors and windows that could be easily worked with a chisel.

Although replacement fenestration and the prominence of the rear extension detract from the terrace, the building retains its distinctive architectural character. It is set on an elevated site overlooking the sea to the west of Castlerock, street-fronted with a garden to the east and paved yard to the rear. The terrace greatly contributes to the late nineteenth-century character of Castlerock, with group value recognised through the extent of listing which includes the cobbles.