Former Superintendent's House at Blackhead Lighthouse, McCrea's Brae, Whitehead, Co Antrim, BT38 9NZ

Former Superintendent's House at Blackhead Lighthouse

This house was built for the Lighthouse Superintendent as part of the Blackhead lighthouse complex, constructed between 1899 and 1902 by the Commissioners of Irish Lights under the direction of their Chief Engineer, William Douglass. The lighthouse opened on 1 April 1902. The house is well proportioned and carefully executed with minimal embellishment. It retains much of its internal character and has group value within the overall lighthouse site as part of an intact complex, which is now scarce.

A detached, single-storey, three-bay house aligned north-south with its principal elevation facing east towards the sea. The building has a hipped natural slate roof with rendered chimneys to each gable. The walls are painted rendered stone (probably rubble) with plain and dentillated yellow-brick eaves courses. Cast-iron ogee gutters and downpipes form the rainwater goods.

The symmetrical east façade features a central single-storey entrance porch with pitched natural slate roof and raised verge. The porch has tongue-and-groove doors on both its right and left cheeks, though only the left is now in use. It contains a 6/6 timber sliding sash window to its gable with a painted shouldered cill. Flanking the porch are two square-headed 6/6 timber sliding sash windows with painted shouldered granite cills at ground floor level. Three identical windows are positioned above at first floor level, aligned with the ground floor openings.

The north elevation is blank, with no openings. The west (back) elevation has no openings except for a single 6/6 window to the middle of the first floor. A high yard wall shelters the rear and provides support for single-storey lean-to outbuildings. These outbuildings line the inside face of the yard wall; the wall is raised to accommodate their roofs. One lean-to abuts the north end of the house's back elevation and contains an entrance door to the house. An access door into the yard opens on the wall's south side, and two sash windows (1/1 and 6/6) are positioned along the wall's west side.

A single-storey lean-to abuts the south gable. The exposed section of this gable has no openings. The lean-to has a monopitched natural slate roof with raised verges, with rainwater goods and walls detailed as the main block, including yellow-brick eases courses. A door opens on its right cheek and a 6/6 sash window on its south elevation.

The interior retains built-in presses and dressers in yellow pine. Cast-iron fireplaces are present in the bedrooms, with modern fireplaces to the ground floor. Irrigation channels are cut into the ground floor front room cill to direct rainwater away. Whistle pipes are partly present in the structure. An underground rainwater tank for washing was positioned in front of the houses.

After automation of the light in 1975, the house was vacated by lighthouse staff and is now rented out to the public by the Commissioners of Irish Lights.