3 Coastguard Cottages, Harbour Road, Ballintoy, Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, BT54 6NA

No. 3 Coastguard Cottages, Ballintoy Harbour

This is a mid-terrace, two-storey, single-bay former coastguard dwelling, built around 1873 as part of a group of four (formerly five) coastguard cottages situated on the clifftop above Ballintoy Harbour, County Antrim. It is the smallest unit in the terrace. The listing extends beyond the building itself to include the associated steps, railings, gate pier and gate.

The building is rectangular on plan. Its roof is pitched and covered in artificial slate, with a rebuilt brown brick chimneystack featuring a moulded cap and multiple terracotta pots, shared with the adjoining building. Rainwater goods are replacement metal gutters fixed to a timber fascia. The external walls are finished in painted roughcast render. Windows are uPVC replacements throughout, except where otherwise noted, and are set in painted long-and-short tooled stone surrounds with smooth rendered reveals and tooled stone lintels; the cills are painted stone.

The principal north elevation has a single window to each floor, centrally placed. Both gables are abutted by the adjoining buildings in the terrace. The rear south elevation is partly obscured at ground floor level by a later lean-to conservatory addition of little historic interest, which extends the full width of the building. To the right of the conservatory at ground floor, there is an original timber six-over-six sash window; to the left is a later panelled and partially glazed entrance door. There is a single window at first floor on this elevation.

Setting

The cottage forms part of a group dramatically sited on an extremely exposed clifftop location above Ballintoy Harbour. Despite this prominent position, the group is surprisingly hidden from the harbour itself due to the steep terrain. The gardens are communal and include a narrow strip of lawn to the north and a series of original individual kitchen garden plots to the east — features of social interest that speak directly to the self-sufficient domestic life of coastguard families stationed at rural posts.

To the south, running along the south edge of a narrow linear yard, each cottage is served by a single-storey outbuilding and toilet. The outbuilding serving No. 3 is shared with No. 4 and has a monopitched slated roof, painted rendered walls and timber-sheeted doors. The rear yard is bounded by a rubble stone wall built to courses. The rear of the properties is connected by a raised rubble stone platform; that serving No. 3 has a partially cobbled surface and is accessed by four stone steps, though the original masonry of the steps has been replaced. The platform is bounded by dwarf barley-twist cast iron railings with ball finials. The shared northern boundary wall is rubble masonry with a soldier-coursed coping and retains a single tooled and dressed pier at the west end, with a pyramidal cap.

The group as a whole retains much of its original character, including boundary features, outbuildings, a laundry and the original kitchen garden plots. Of particular significance are the gun loops and panoramic lookout windows that survive elsewhere in the group, retaining physical evidence of the defensive and regulatory functions of the early coastguard service. These features give the group — including No. 3 — considerable importance in the context of the maritime history of this coastal area.

Historical background

The Water Guard, also known as the Preventative Boat Service, was formed in 1809 as the sea-based arm of revenue enforcement, patrolling the shore and operating a series of Watch Houses along the coast. As excise duties imposed by the British Government drove a surge in smuggling, the Irish Coast Guard was established by the Board of Customs in 1822, replacing earlier independent bodies including the Water Guard, Revenue Cruisers and Riding Officers. The coastguard's initial role was revenue protection and coastal defence, but following the Coastguard Service Act of 1856, control passed from the Board of Customs to the Admiralty, bringing a shift in purpose. With the decline in smuggling, the service increasingly functioned as an auxiliary to the Navy while retaining some revenue protection and lifesaving duties. The 1856 Act enabled the acquisition of land for new stations and the enlargement of existing ones; the Admiralty undertook extensive new building work, spending £35,000 between 1856 and 1862, resulting in a large number of purpose-built stations.

Between 1907 and 1912, seventy-nine stations were closed. From a workforce of 4,100 men in 1901, numbers had fallen to 3,000 by 1911. When control transferred to the Board of Trade in 1923, further Admiralty stations were closed or downgraded as priorities and locations shifted. The primary role became coastal observation, combined with responsibility for co-ordinating all lifesaving activities, including those of the RNLI. Staffing continued to fall through the 20th century, and by the mid-1970s it had been decided to sell off the remaining coastguard accommodation. Throughout the Admiralty era, accommodation typically comprised a closely grouped row of cottages, often with a watch room, boathouse, equipment store, wash-house and enclosing boundary wall, with vegetable gardens provided for the growing of food given the self-sufficient demands of rural postings. The officer's house was generally positioned at the end of the terrace and differed from the others only by the provision of a few additional rooms. Because stations of the Admiralty era were required to be defensible against attack, the houses were designed to be intercommunicating, with the number of entrances kept to a minimum and gun loops strategically placed to defend entrances and windows. Watch rooms housed ammunition, signalling and observation equipment, served as the point from which orders were given, and from the 1920s onwards contained the station telephone; where the watch room was part of the officer's house, it had a separate access entirely independent of the domestic quarters.

A coastguard station was first established at Ballintoy in January 1822. A square-plan watch house is shown on the first and second edition Ordnance Survey maps (surveyed 1831–3 and 1853–8) just to the north of the present site, and is referenced by Lewis in 1837, who describes Ballintoy as having "a coast-guard station, which is one of eight stations that form the district of Ballycastle." This earlier watch house and associated boathouse were valued at £1 5s in Griffith's Valuation of 1859, but the Annual Revisions covering 1864 to 1878 record that they were replaced by the present group of buildings, newly built around 1873 and valued at £20. An Alexander G. Fullerton was noted as the lessor. The group first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map (1900–06), captioned "Coastguard Station," and is shown with four small garden plots to the rear, a number of detached outbuildings, and a square-plan watch house abutting the eastern elevation of the main building.

Census records of 1901 show the buildings comprising five private dwellings, each housing one of five coastguards and their families: Thomas Fox, Arthur Strange, John Jarrett, John Giles and William Stokesbury. Each dwelling was recorded as having four rooms — two on each floor — with two windows to the front. John Jarrett, listed as Chief Boatman in charge, occupied the larger house (thought to be No. 1), which had six rooms and four windows to the front elevation. Notably, all five coastguards and most of their family members were recorded as being from England, confirming that they had been posted to Ballintoy rather than recruited locally.

The collective value of the buildings fell to £17 10s in 1909 when one house was listed as vacant, before recovering to £20 in 1910, at which point the entire group was recorded as vacant. By 1914 the empty houses and outbuildings, listed as the "old Coastguard Station," had been surrendered by the Admiralty and passed into the ownership of a George Fullerton. Valuation records and Ulster Town Directories from 1906 to 1913 indicate that the station at Ballintoy ceased to operate around 1908, as the Admiralty closed a number of stations across Britain and Ireland during this period, though the buildings continued to be marked "Coastguard Cottages" on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map (1931–7).

Following the transfer of control to the Board of Trade in 1923, the watch tower was separately valued at £4 in the Annual Revisions covering 1916 to 1930 and continued to be operated by the Board, likely functioning as an auxiliary lookout. The First and Second General Revaluations (1935–57 and 1958–72) show that the watch tower and store remained in use until 1937, after which the tower was converted to a dwelling and later amalgamated with the building to its west to form the present No. 4. The buildings subsequently became five private dwellings. Records show that the present No. 3 (originally numbered No. 4) was owned by a Theresa Ferguson until 1955, passing to a Major George Ferguson and then to a Joan Hardie in 1966, who also owned the adjoining property then designated No. 3 — that is, the eastern half of what is now No. 2. The associated outbuildings have remained largely unchanged since at least the early 20th century.