46 Culmore Point Road, Culmore, Londonderry, BT48 8JW

A cottage dwelling at Culmore Point Road that has undergone significant changes over many decades, illustrating the adaptive capacity of historic buildings. Modern alterations have substantially reduced its historical and architectural character.

The house is a single storey long house with one and a half storey at the west end, finished in roughcast rendering and colour washed, with a natural slated roof featuring good eaves overhang to the south and shaped, exposed roof rafters. Five single chimney stacks, smooth rendered with caps and single tall pots, are evenly spaced from gable to gable. The building is seven bays long, built close to and parallel to the road, facing approximately due south with views across Culmore Bay, the narrows of the River Foyle, Foyle Bridge, and Ballynagard House.

A gabled projecting porch with slated roof forms the central bay, with three large windows on one side and two on the other. Beyond this, the one and a half storey section forms a gable with a large canted bow window at ground floor level and a small oriel window set within the gable. Windows throughout are large two-light timber sashes, not sliding, with long stone cills and small corbels underneath. The porch has two-light timber windows and a panelled door on the flank wall. A two storey extension to the rear, added in more recent times, is set back from the east gable of the single storey part and is therefore largely unobtrusive from the roadside. A high hedge separates the house from the road.

The building was probably constructed as two, if not three, coast guard houses by the Irish Society for the Board of Admiralty around 1864, at a time when the fort served as a coast guard station. In 1865 the Irish Society constructed a new road to Culmore Point and erected a water wall for protection. When the Admiralty removed the coast guard station in 1866, much to the Irish Society's annoyance, the Society subsequently arranged for two of the houses to be converted to a constabulary station. The Irish Society retained ownership of 46 Culmore Point Road until approximately twelve years before the 1999 survey date, when Brian Doherty purchased it. Doherty added the rear extension and retained a large site to the rear where he built a new house. The present owners acquired the property four years before the 1999 survey date.