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

4 Old Coastguard Cottages is a Grade B2 listed building forming part of a former coastguard station built in 1868 in Ballycastle. It has significant architectural and historical interest both as an individual building and as part of the wider group of former coastguard houses on the site.

The building is a two-storey terrace that once comprised a cottage for the commanding officer and six cottages for ranks, with an off-centre tower and small outhouses arranged across an entrance street. Each cottage unit is paired with a small enclosed yard opposite, containing a lean-to roofed store. The terrace is accessed by a laneway from North Street and stands freestanding within its grounds, though the grounds have been substantially diminished by later development.

No. 4 is two bays wide. The entrance door is positioned next to the tower with a high rectangular fanlight to its left and a two-light window with one light narrower than the other, divided by a sandstone mullion. At the time of survey both windows were boarded up. The first-floor level has two double-hung sliding sash windows with twelve panes each, positioned not quite centrally above the elements below. All window and door openings are trimmed with sandstone blocks bonded into the wall. The front elevation features a harled (roughcast) unpainted wall with a plinth and continuous corbel course with a half-round gutter secured to the face. There is no downpipe. The roof is slated with a chimney stack on the ridge, positioned parallel to it. The cottage abuts the tower and was in a dilapidated state at survey.

The rear (north-west) elevation has a single vertical window centred on the wall and boarded up at ground floor, with a two-light double-hung sliding sash eight-pane window above, also centred, with a broad mullion between the lights. Where the wall meets the tower are two slit windows, one at ground floor and one at first floor. All openings are trimmed with sandstone. A continuous corbel course with gutter runs across this elevation. A lean-to store occupies the angle between the cottage and tower. The wall is harled and unpainted with a plinth. The outhouse and partially enclosed yard opposite were in a dilapidated state at the time of survey.

The coastguard station was erected in 1868 as part of an extensive building programme by the Irish Board of Public Works, designed by E.T. Owen, assistant architect in the board's Dublin office, under the direction of the board's principal architect, his brother J.H. Owen. E.T. Owen had taken over responsibility for designing coastguard stations from J.H. Owen in the mid-1860s. The original station comprised five houses and a tower. The station was vacated by the coastguard around the 1960s and the buildings reverted to the Trustees of the Fullerton Estate.

The current coastguard station was established on this site by 1904, as shown in the Ordnance Survey map of that year. A previous coastguard station had existed nearer to the sea, adjacent to the pier, where the residences of the coastguard officers in the 1830s were described as having "nothing in their architecture or appearance worthy of description".

Although the building was boarded up at the time of survey in 2000, it was subsequently renovated with Listed Building Consent, with works scheduled for completion in 2004.