3 Coastguard Cottages, Causeway View Lane, Portrush, BT56 8DA

No. 3 Coastguard Cottages is a two-storey mid-terraced house, built in 1896 as part of a former Coastguard station in Portrush, County Antrim. It sits on a slight rise to the north of Portrush town centre, between Main Street to the south and Causeway View Lane to the north, and is now in private residential use.

The station as a whole comprises a detached two-storey station building and commanding officer's house (130 Main Street) at the south end of the site, a terrace of six two-storey dwellings (1–6 Coastguard Cottages) running north–south, a range of single-storey outbuildings to the rear, and a later Belfast Truss-roofed building in the north-west corner of the site facing Causeway View Lane (recorded separately). The entire grouping was designed in a simple, loosely Georgian style — almost an artisan-cottage simplicity — and, although lacking the architectural flourishes of some earlier coastguard stations, makes an attractive and coherent group. The buildings may originally have been finished in brick, though the evidence is not conclusive; the complex is now almost entirely rendered.

Within the terrace, cottages 3–4 and 5–6 are arranged as mirror-image pairs with identical internal layouts, entered from the east side off Causeway View Lane. Nos. 1 and 2 are similarly paired but slightly larger and entered from the west side off Main Street, reflecting the higher status of their occupants within the service hierarchy. No. 3 is mid-terraced, sitting immediately to the north of No. 2, with its principal façade facing east.

Access to No. 3 is via a communal yard, a section of which facing the property has been divided off with a later brick wall. To the rear there is a single-storey kitchen return, lean-to against the rear return of No. 2, which also houses the main entrance. This single-storey return is set to the left side of the east façade. To the left side of the north face there is a wide, flat-headed window opening with a painted timber casement frame; to the right side is a flat-headed door opening with a plain flat-panel timber door. All window openings are flat-headed. The frames to the two first-floor openings of the return are 3-over-6 timber sashes; all remaining windows to the east and west sides are modern timber casements. The roof is pitched, finished in natural slate with grey fireclay ridge tiles; eaves are overhanging with exposed rafter tails. Rainwater goods are uPVC. There is a shared rendered chimneystack at the ridge with corbelled bands and matching clay pots. Walls are finished in ruled and lined render; the west elevation is set on a rubble stone canted plinth.

The detached gardens belonging to each dwelling in the terrace lie to the west side of the site. To the east there are two communal access yards separated by a masonry wall: the northern yard serves the front entrances of Nos. 3–6, and the southern yard gives access to the rears of No. 130 Main Street and Nos. 1–2. Behind Nos. 3–6 is a small range of single-storey outbuildings containing a communal washhouse and two small outhouses per dwelling — one an outside WC and the other a fuel store.

The station was built in 1896 to replace a pre-1857 predecessor on Main Street, which comprised a station house and four smaller dwellings arranged in a terrace fronting directly onto the street, and which may not have been purpose-built. A Board of Works tender notice for the new buildings appeared in August 1892, though valuations do not record a new coastguard station under construction until 1896. The identity of the architect is not known. Valuations suggest the building costs amounted to approximately £2,500. The original station also possessed a rocket station and a look-out hut, the latter possibly elevated, though this is not certain.

No. 3 was entered in the valuation records as the home of William Elliott from at least 1925 and remained with the Elliott family until 1944. Subsequent occupants included Mary C. Ferguson (1945–51), James Gildea (1951–61), and Thomas Patton, who became resident in 1961 and acquired the freehold in 1963. The house was sold to Alistair McCooke in 1985, who sold it in 1993, and it passed to its present owners around 2003.

In 1923, following the transfer of the Coastguard from the Admiralty to the Board of Trade — with its role restricted to life-saving, salvage from wreck, and administration of the foreshore — staff numbers were reduced and the cottages began to be let to private tenants. The station building at No. 130 Main Street and Cottage No. 1 were retained in Coastguard use until at least 1972.

The Belfast Truss-roofed building in the north-west corner of the site was constructed on ground originally forming part of the gardens of Nos. 5 and 6, at some point after 1921 and possibly after 1935, as it does not appear on an Ordnance Survey map partially revised in that year. It appears to have had no direct relationship with the cottages.

The Coastguard in Ireland traces its origins to the Preventative Water Guard, a UK-wide body established in 1809 to combat smuggling. In 1816 this body was expanded and reorganised to take control of revenue vessels, and in 1822 it was transferred to the Board of Customs and renamed the Coast Guard. Despite being in practice involved in rescuing those in difficulty at sea, revenue protection rather than lifesaving remained its official function. In 1856 the Guard was transferred to the Admiralty, its personnel becoming mainly naval men involved in coastal defence and serving as a naval reserve. In 1923 the Coastguard was placed under the Board of Trade, its role thereafter confined to life-saving, salvage from wreck, and administration of the foreshore.

As a good example of its type and an important part of the surviving Coastguard estate in the Province, the property retains architectural interest in its style, proportion, plan form, and setting, as well as group value as part of the wider station complex. Some alterations have detracted from the building's original character. It also holds local historical interest.