2 Coastguard Cottages, Coast Road, Ballygalley, Larne, Co Antrim, BT40 2QY

Two Coastguard Cottages is a single-storey former coastguard cottage in red brick with sandstone dressings, designed in a mixed Victorian style by the architect William Gray of Belfast and built in 1873. It forms part of an attractive terrace of similar cottages set back from the coast road facing the sea.

The cottage is laid out on an L-shaped plan with a projecting porch positioned in the angle formed by the front return to the left. The entrance facade is four openings wide and faces north-east. A recessed central doorway is set within a single-bay flat-roofed porch with a segmental arch in buff sandstone. The doorway itself is a segmental-headed panelled wooden door painted black (a replacement). A buff sandstone blocking course sits on the porch. The side wall of the porch 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 is a wall one window wide with smooth rendered finish painted white (not original and inappropriate). This window is rectangular, a timber sliding sash vertically hung with 6 over 6 glazing bars and horns (a replacement). To the left of the porch, the front return wall displays two windows arranged symmetrically around the central axis of the hipped roof. The first window to the left is a rectangular sliding sash similar to that on the right, but with a flat arch in red sandstone with buff sandstone keystone. The second window to the left is semi-circular headed, a timber vertically hung sliding sash with horns and one horizontal glazing bar to each sash, set in a semi-circular red sandstone arch with buff keystone. Both of these windows are accurate replacements of the originals.

The cottage sits on a rubble blackstone plinth with red sandstone weathering, abutted by a low red brick wall with piers and gates (recent inappropriate additions). The roof is hipped with Bangor blue slates in regular courses and an oversailing sandstone eaves course. A chimney on the party wall with the adjoining house to the right has been replaced with plain unmoulded rustic brick with a red pot (inappropriate replacement). The chimney to the left extremity at the cross ridge on the party wall with the adjoining house retains original moulded red brick with sandstone base weatherings and projecting string, though partly renewed, and is topped with cream earthenware pots.

The rear facade has been substantially altered by recent single-storey flat-roofed extensions in modern style with plastic single and double doors set in white painted rendered walls. The rendered back boundary wall is painted white.

The entrance front retains its original character and most of its original features. However, several inappropriate replacements have been introduced, including PVC downpipes and guttering (where cast iron originals existed), replacement windows, and modern boundary treatments with iron gates.

The cottage is one of a terrace of five similar cottages and one two-storey house, all set back from the main road. A small front garden is enclosed by a rubble basalt front boundary wall and a modern red brick side boundary wall containing inappropriate modern iron gates set between red brick piers.

The building first appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1903, and its architectural and historical significance lies in its group value as part of the terrace, its authorship by William Gray, and its rarity as an example of mid-Victorian coastguard housing.