4 Coastguard Cottages, Ballygalley, Larne, Co Antrim, BT40 2QY

4 Coastguard Cottages, Ballygalley

This is a single-storey former coastguard cottage in red brick with sandstone dressings, built in 1873 to the design of Belfast architect William Gray. It forms part of an attractive mid-Victorian terrace of five similar cottages, set back from the main road facing the sea at Ballygalley, County Antrim. The building retains its original character and most original features on its entrance front.

The cottage is laid out on an L-shaped plan with a projecting porch in the angle to the front left. The main entrance faces north-east and the entrance facade is four openings wide. A recessed doorway sits in the centre of a single-bay flat-roofed porch, with a segmental arch in red sandstone topped by a buff sandstone keystone. The original segmental-headed panelled wooden door is painted white. The porch has a buff sandstone blocking course, now badly fractured, and its side wall contains two windows set in coupled round red sandstone heads with semi-circular headed wooden fixed lights of single pane and red sandstone cills.

To the right of the porch, the front wall is one window wide. A rectangular timber sliding sash window, vertically hung with 6 over 6 panes and horns, sits in red brick beneath an oversailing sandstone eaves course. To the left of the porch, the front return wall mirrors the right side, with two windows symmetrically arranged around a central axis. The first window is a matching rectangular sliding sash; the second is a semi-circular headed timber sliding sash, vertically hung with horns and one horizontal glazing bar to each sash, set in a semi-circular red sandstone arch with buff keystone. A hipped roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses covers both sections. An original moulded red brick chimney at the left extremity stands on the party wall with the adjoining house, with a sandstone base weathering and projecting string, topped by a cream earthenware pot.

The rubble blackstone plinth with red sandstone weathering runs below the front walls. Original guttering and downpipes have been replaced or modified with modern painted tin or PVC versions.

The rear facade has been significantly altered. The original rear wall below eaves level is now largely obscured by recent extensions dating to around 1987. These comprise a single-storey flat-roofed addition to the left with full-height PVC patio doors, and a two-storey gabled return in red brick with a slated roof, PVC windows, and PVC guttering and downpipes. The rear roof maintains the original slate, and the original paired moulded red brick chimney, shared with the adjoining house on a common base at the party wall, remains.

The house sits within a terrace of four other similar cottages and one two-storey house, arranged around a communal area that is partly gravelled and partly grassed, bordered by a low stone front boundary wall of rubble basalt. The cottages first appear on the Ordnance Survey map of 1903, though they were actually designed and built in 1873 according to the Irish Builder and Engineer.