Watch House, opposite 87 Cranfield Point Road, Kilkeel, Newry, Co Down, BT34 4LJ

Watch House

A three-storey coastguard lookout station standing on the coast near Kilkeel, facing south-east. The building consists of a single room on each floor, accessed by external steps. The ground floor is three-quarters height. An overhanging cast in-situ concrete roof, very slightly pitched to the rear, drains through a cast iron downpipe.

The entire second floor is built upon a similar roof structure, suggesting the building may originally have been single storey. The walls are finished in painted smooth render.

The front elevation, facing the sea, is abutted at ground floor and part of first floor level by a Second World War pillbox, constructed of red brick 200 millimetres deep, formerly whitewashed, with a cast in-situ concrete roof. The pillbox features single precast concrete gun-loops to its front and left cheek.

At first floor centre of the main block is a single fixed metal window with top-hung transom and concrete cill. Between first and second floor runs a cantilevered concrete viewing platform, raised level above the sloping concrete roof and wrapping around the left and right sides, enclosed by tubular metal railing. The second floor viewing window spans the entire wall from corner to corner, constructed as three-paned timber with a small opening casement in the bottom of the central pane to allow verbal communication with the viewing platform.

The right elevation contains the entrance to the first and second floors. Seven concrete steps rise from the right corner to a concrete platform serving a first floor door, slightly right of centre. This door is constructed of tongue-and-groove sheeting with a small fixed metal window with top-hung transom to its left. The platform advances forward and steps up one level, supported from the left by brickwork of the right wall of the pillbox. From here a short metal ladder rises left onto the pillbox roof, enclosed by tubular metal handrail. A metal ladder with timber treads then abuts the second floor viewing platform in front of the window. At second floor is a glazed plywood door in line with the door below, with a two-paned timber window filling the wall to its left from door jamb to corner. The left pane contains three small windows, again allowing verbal communication with the platform.

The left elevation is abutted at ground floor right by a small lean-to structure with corrugated asbestos roof, brick wall matching the pillbox, and a doorway on the left cheek, now boarded over. To its left, on the main block with cill at ground level, is a boarded-over window with moulded render hood to its head. At first floor right is a fixed metal window with top-hung transom, and a two-paned timber window with small opening pane to the right side, forming part of the wrap-around viewing window.

The rear elevation is blank except for a boarded-over small door to the ground floor with moulded hood to its head. The pillbox right elevation now has a doorway but was likely originally similar to the left cheek, accessed through an opening on its rear right below the main step to the first floor platform. This opening was formerly a small porch with a timber door, now gone, though traces of the frame remain.