8 Marine Parade, Whitehead, Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, BT38 9QP

8 Marine Parade, Whitehead

An attached end-of-terrace two-bay two-storey house built in 1870, located to the west of Marine Parade. The building is L-shaped on plan with a lower two-storey rear return to the south-west and an attached modern timber-sheeted garage to the south.

The pitched and hipped roof is covered in natural slate with deep overhanging eaves on exposed rafter tails, terracotta ridge tiles, and timber bargeboards supported on corbelled brackets. The chimneys are replacement concrete with clay pots, except for a roughcast chimney on the return. The walls are smooth rendered over a projecting plinth.

The principal elevation faces east. The right bay projects and contains a gabled form with a pair of round-arched-headed windows at ground floor, divided by a rendered colonette in a chamfered surround, and a pair of segmental-headed windows at first floor sharing a sill. The left bay is recessed and contains a single window at first floor. At the re-entrant angle is a timber-framed canted porch on a rendered plinth with an overhanging hipped roof supported on decorative timber supports. The porch has double-leaf timber panelled entrance doors and is glazed above timber panelled apron panels. Windows throughout are square-headed timber-framed 1/1 sliding sash with painted masonry sills.

The south elevation contains a pair of windows with shared sills at first floor, with the garage abutting at ground floor level. The west elevation is pebble-dashed and contains a single window at each floor on the left. The return to the south has windows flanking a replacement timber entrance door at ground floor and three windows at first floor on its south elevation. A replacement vertically-sheeted timber door is centrally positioned on the north elevation of the return, flanked by windows.

The building retains original features internally and externally. The ornate timberwork porch provides visual interest to an otherwise plainly detailed exterior. Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes serve the building.

The house is set within a garden to the south and east, bounded to the road by timber fencing, with an enclosed yard to the rear accessed through a segmental-headed vertically-sheeted timber door from a shared rear alley.

The building belongs to a block of four houses built in 1870 under the direction of architect Timothy Hevey as the first stage of development of the new seaside town of Whitehead. The road from Carrickfergus to Larne was completed in 1854, and the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway extended to Larne ten years later with a halt at Whitehead to serve the local community. These developments provided the impetus for Whitehead's development in the late nineteenth century. The buildings first appear on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1902. The Valuation Revision map for Whitehead town of 1907–13 numbered the row of houses differently than at present: No.6, 7, 8 and 9 instead of the current numbering system of No.8, 9, 10 and 11. Valuation Revisions from the 1920s record No.8 as a house and yard occupied by Susan McAlery in 1928 and leased from J.M McAllery, valued at £20.

The building presents an attractive frontage to the picturesque seafront promenade of Whitehead and contributes positively to the Conservation Area. Although the terrace group is well-conceived and retains original unity, this building is not of sufficient individual interest to warrant listing on its own, and the other buildings in the group have been altered to an extent that listing them all under group value is not considered appropriate.