6 Old Coastguard Cottages, North Street, Ballycastle, Co Antrim, BT54 6BZ

6 Old Coastguard Cottages is one of a terrace of houses forming part of a former coastguard station of mid-Victorian date, designed by an important Irish architectural office. Despite some alterations to the exterior and the setting, the building retains much architectural and historical interest and has considerable group value with the other former coastguard houses.

The complex comprises a two-storey terrace consisting of a former cottage for the commanding officer and six cottages for ranks, with an off-centre tower and small outhouses arranged across an entrance street. Opposite each unit stands a small enclosed yard with a lean-to roofed store. The terrace is reached by a laneway from North Street and stands freestanding within its grounds, though these have been much diminished by later development.

The cottages have slated roofs with hips; the tower is flat roofed with a high parapet wall. Number 6 is two bays wide. The entrance door is positioned on the left of the north-west façade, fitted with a glazed panel divided into four small panes with a three-pane rectangular fanlight above. To the right is a double hung sliding sash window with twelve panes, and at first floor a double hung sliding sash twelve-pane window centred directly above. The walls are finished in roughcast render, painted, with openings trimmed in what is mostly imitation pink sandstone coloured finish. A continuous corbel course runs at eaves level with metal gutter and single downpipe, slated roof, chimney stack, and a slight plinth.

The rear (south-east) elevation is two bays wide, one of which is a two-storey one-bay return with a glazed door containing twelve panes and a three-pane fanlight, with a double hung sliding sash twelve-pane window with pier between. Above this is a two-light double hung sliding sash eight-pane window. On the flanking south-west wall is a double hung sliding sash twelve-pane window at ground level and a double hung sliding sash eight-pane window at first floor. The same arrangement is repeated on the unextended bay. The walls are finished in roughcast, painted, with artificial trim to all openings. The north-east side of the return has no windows. A continuous corbel course runs at eaves, topped with half-round metal gutter and two downpipes, slated and hipped roof, and a single chimney stack. The outhouse and yard have been renovated and neatly paved.

The building was erected in 1868 as part of a Coast Guard Station which originally comprised five houses and a tower, probably to the designs of E.T. Owen, assistant architect in the Irish Board of Public Works in Dublin, under the direction of the board's principal architect, his brother J.H. Owen. E.T. Owen appears to have taken over responsibility for the design of coastguard stations from J.H. Owen in the mid-1860s. The station was vacated by the coastguard around the 1960s and the buildings subsequently reverted to the Trustees of the Fullerton Estate.

The coastguard station appears for the first time on the Ordnance Survey map of 1904. Prior to that, the Ordnance Survey map of 1855 shows a coastguard station in a position nearer to the sea, adjacent to the pier; the residences of the officers of that earlier coastguard station are described in the 1830s as being "without anything in their architecture or appearance worthy of description". Photographs by W.A. Green dating to around 1900, now in the collection of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, and photographs by W. Lawrence of similar date in the collection of the National Library of Ireland show the coastguard station in its original setting and original form.