Former Lighthouse Keepers Houses at Blackhead Lighthouse, McCrea's Brae, Whitehead, Co Antrim, BT38 9NZ

A pair of well-detailed symmetrical stone-built two-storey lighthouse keepers' houses at Blackhead Lighthouse, built between 1899 and 1902 by the Commissioners of Irish Lights under the direction of their Chief Engineer William Douglass. The complex opened on 1 April 1902. The lighthouse was manned until 31 July 1975, and the houses were subsequently leased to the Irish Landmark Trust, who have sensitively restored them for use as short-term holiday lets.

The semi-detached houses, constructed around 1902, are aligned north-south immediately west of the lighthouse to which they are connected by a single-storey passage, forming an H-plan. Each house is an identically detailed mirror image of the other. The walls are probably rubble stone, painted and rendered. The roofs are of hipped profile and clad with natural slates. Rendered chimneys with yellow clay pots are positioned at each end (four pots) and at the centre (two pots). Cast-iron rainwater goods with ogee-profile gutters run throughout. A projecting course of yellow brick runs along the eaves, with a dentillated course underneath.

The principal elevations face east towards the sea. A monopitched natural slate roof forms a veranda between the projecting ends of the houses. Beaded tongue-and-groove entrance doors open into each house on the inside cheeks of the veranda. In front of the veranda is a balcony over the basement, accessed by flights of steps up each side. The balcony continues as a walkway along the roof of the linking passage to the lighthouse. All openings have square heads with painted shouldered granite cills to the windows. Most windows to the principal elevation are 6/6 sliding sashes, with small 2/2 sashes at each end of the veranda and 4/4 sashes to the basement. The basement also contains an emergency escape door, probably a recent insertion.

The north and south elevations each have single 6/6 sliding sash windows to the ground and first floors. The west (rear) elevation contains a single-storey section between end returns, with a beaded tongue-and-groove back door and small 6/6 sash to each house. Above this, the exposed first floor wall has a 2/2 sash to each house. Two single-storey outbuildings abut the middle of the single-storey section, one to each house. A high wall encloses a yard at the rear of each house, with doorways to outside on its west elevation.

The interiors retain much of their original character, with built-in presses and dressers in yellow pine, cast-iron fireplaces in some bedrooms, and irrigation channels on the ground floor front room cill. Whistle pipes for signalling are partly present. The houses contribute significantly to the setting of the lighthouse and have group value in the context of the site as a whole. They are of scarcity value as an intact complex and are of local historical interest and industrial archaeological significance.