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

Four Cliff Terrace is a terraced single-bay one-and-a-half-storey stone former labourer's cottage built around 1875. It was constructed as one of twelve similar houses commissioned by Sir William Harvey Bruce and designed by Frederick Henry Godwin. The terrace is known locally as the 'Twelve Apostles' and first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1906, though the houses date from around 1875. An entry in the Irish Builder of February 1882 describes the terrace as 'recently erected', though construction appears to have occurred some years earlier. The terrace is noted as 'an English design in an Irish setting'.

The building retains many of its original architectural features. It has a steeply pitched natural slate roof with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles and a tall rendered chimneystack to the west, shared with the adjoining house. The eaves are deep and overhanging with timber sheeting and exposed timber beams supported by two stop-chamfered timber brackets on cement corbels. The walls are of random coursed rock-faced local basalt with tooled sandstone ashlar dressings and cement pointing. A pair of dormer windows to the front pitch feature hipped slate roofs, timber pinnacles and replacement timber casement windows. The ground floor retains its original four-light timber window frame with plain glazing in a square-headed opening with stop-chamfered dressed sandstone surround and sandstone sill. The front elevation features a segmental-headed recessed entrance porch with stop-chamfered dressed sandstone surround and keystone, shared with No. 3. The entrance porch contains a square-headed door opening set at a right angle to the façade with an original sheeted timber door and iron door furniture. The porch has a clay tiled floor and opens onto a worn sandstone step and a slightly raised area laid in cobbles running the length of the terrace. The front elevation is rectangular on plan facing north.

A flat-roofed single-storey extension with box dormer was added to the rear around 1980. Replacement synthetic guttering is supported on timber fascia. The east elevation is abutted by adjoining house No. 3, and the west elevation is abutted by adjoining house No. 5.

The original plan consisted of a single room on the ground floor and a washhouse or scullery to the rear, with 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 not all inhabitants were employed by the Hervey Bruce family. The houses were valued at £2 5s in the valuation fieldbook between 1873 and 1878 when all were inhabited. The valuation was dropped to £1 10s in 1887, with rent recorded as 10d per week. By 1901, the three-room houses were designated second class and all tenants leased from the Hervey Bruce estate. The first recorded tenant at number four was Thomas Anderson. By 1901, the occupier was Adam Anderson, a labourer, living with his wife and five children. By the early 1930s, the buildings remained largely as originally constructed with a kitchen on the ground floor, two small bedrooms upstairs, and a separate single-storey washhouse in the rear yard. Water had to be carried from a pump. Rents at that time ranged from 6s to 8s 8d a month. Since the 1960s and 1970s, most houses have been extended to the rear and refurbished internally.

Architect Frederick Henry Godwin was a nephew of the better-known Edward William Godwin. He is little documented with only three local structures attributed to him, this terrace being the last. He moved to England around 1890 and is thought to have designed additions to Westburton House, Gloucestershire. The stone used was local basalt with freestone dressings to doors and windows.

The terrace is built on an elevated site overlooking the sea to the west of Castlerock, is street-fronted with a paved rear garden, and greatly contributes to the late nineteenth-century character of the village. While the dormer windows have been replaced, Four Cliff Terrace retains its original ground floor window frame and original sheeted door, making it one of the more intact examples on the terrace. It retains its distinctive steeply pitched roof, deep overhanging eaves, tall chimney stacks, original basalt stone walling with freestone dressings.