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

12 Cliff Terrace, Castlerock, County Londonderry

This is an end-of-terrace, single-bay, one-and-a-half-storey former labourer's cottage built in around 1875, forming the last in a row of twelve identical houses collectively known locally as the 'Twelve Apostles'. The terrace was built for Sir Henry Hervey Bruce, third baronet of Downhill, to designs by the architect Frederick Henry Godwin. It sits on an elevated site overlooking the sea to the west of Castlerock, and the row as a whole makes a significant contribution to the late 19th-century character of the village.

Architectural Description

The cottage is rectangular in plan, facing north. Its most immediately striking features are its steeply pitched natural slate roof, deep overhanging eaves, and tall chimney stacks — characteristics that give the terrace its distinctive silhouette. The roof is half-hipped to the gable end and finished with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles. A tall rendered chimneystack rises from the west gable. Two dormer windows project from the front pitch — the eastern one shared with the adjoining house — each with a hipped slate roof, timber pinnacles, and replacement timber casement windows. Moulded cast-iron guttering is carried on a timber fascia. The deep overhanging eaves feature timber sheeting and exposed timber beams supported on a stop-chamfered timber bracket set on a sandstone corbel.

The walls are built in random-coursed, rock-faced basalt — the local stone — with tooled sandstone ashlar dressings and cement pointing. The east gable extends to eaves level and also has sandstone ashlar dressings. A square-headed window opening on this gable is formed within a stop-chamfered dressed sandstone surround with a sandstone sill, and fitted with a replacement four-light timber casement window.

The front elevation has a single window opening and a segmental-headed recessed entrance porch, also with a stop-chamfered dressed sandstone surround and keystone. The entrance porch is shared with the adjoining No. 11, and has a square-headed door opening set at a right angle to the façade, fitted with a replacement sheeted timber door. The porch floor is laid in clay tiles and opens onto a large, worn sandstone step leading to a slightly raised area of cobbling that runs the entire length of the terrace. The east elevation is abutted by the adjoining No. 11.

To the rear, the original rubblestone walling is covered in cement render on the west elevation, which continues as a single-bay, two-storey side elevation to a gable-fronted two-storey rendered extension added to the rear around 2010. This rear extension also has a wall-head dormer window to the west pitch.

Although this cottage has lost its original fenestration, it retains its overall external character and has been extended to the rear sensitively.

Original Plan and Use

The original floor plan, as illustrated in the Irish Builder, shows that each of the twelve cottages consisted of a single room on the ground floor with a washhouse and scullery to the rear, and a staircase leading to the upper floor, where the space was partitioned to form two bedrooms. These tiny cottages were built for estate workers, though by no means all occupants were employed by the Hervey Bruce family. As late as the early 1930s, the buildings remained essentially as originally constructed — a kitchen on the ground floor and two small bedrooms upstairs — with a separate single-storey washhouse in the rear yard and a water supply that had to be carried from a communal pump.

Historical Background

The terrace first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1906, though the houses are recorded in the valuation fieldbook between 1873 and 1878, by which time all twelve were inhabited and valued at £2 5s each. They were described as 'recently erected' in the Irish Builder of February 1882, though they appear to have been constructed some years earlier. The stone used was local basalt with freestone dressings — freestone being a fine-grained stone that could be easily worked with a chisel — to all door and window openings.

The architect, Frederick Henry Godwin, was a nephew of the better-known Edward William Godwin. He is a relatively obscure figure with only three local structures attributed to him, of which this terrace was the last. He moved to England around 1890 and is thought to have designed additions to Westburton House in Gloucestershire. The architectural historian W. D. Girvan has described the terrace as 'an English design in an Irish setting'.

The valuation of all the houses was reduced to £1 10s in 1887, when the recorded rent was 10 pence per week. By the time of the 1901 census, all twelve cottages were classified as second-class three-room dwellings, and all tenants leased from the Hervey Bruce estate. Rents at the time of the first general revaluation in the early 1930s ranged from 6 shillings to 8 shillings and 8 pence per month.

The first recorded tenant of No. 12 was Thomas McLoughlin. Several changes of occupier followed. By the time of the 1901 census, the house was occupied by William McKey, a farm labourer, who lived there with his wife and seven children aged between one and fifteen; the eldest daughter worked as a seamstress. By 1911, McKey was working as a garden labourer — presumably at Downhill — and an eighth child had been born. The older children were by then variously employed or seeking work as seamstresses, a servant, and a postman.

Since the 1960s and 1970s, the majority of the twelve houses have been extended to the rear and refurbished internally.

Setting

The cottage forms part of the terrace of twelve houses set on an elevated site with views over the sea to the west of Castlerock. It is street-fronted, with a paved rear yard enclosed by a rendered wall and timber gates hung on rubblestone piers. The listing extends to the cottage and the cobbled area fronting the terrace.