The Coastguard Station

I’m sure that Lord Dufferin would not have been pleased when, in November 1854, he received a letter from his land agent to say that the local Coastguard commander had contacted him about locating a lookout on Clandeboye land at Grey Point.[1] By 1857, maps were drawn up that also included the coastguard station that looks over us now, and some land along the coast at Grey Point that was ‘probably’ required for a battery.[2]

Dufferin’s agent was understandably concerned about this development, especially as he was currently carrying out Lord Dufferin’s plans to create a landscaped Sea Park along this stretch of coastline. He was hoping that the authorities did not have the power to enforce compliance with their request for the proposed sea defenses,[3] but with the introduction of the Coast-Guard Service Act in 1856, the coastguard authority was passed over to the admiralty, who were given powers of compulsory purchase. So, nothing could be done to prevent it.

The location of the coastguard station was no doubt linked to this inlet, where the boat house and jetty were built. However, this was probably also one of the reasons why Lord Dufferin had been thinking about developing the site for his own use, with a seaside residence nearby. He was a keen and intrepid sailor, having ventured into the Baltic in 1854 and as far North as Spitzbergen in 1856 in his yacht the ‘Foam’,[4] and this would have been a perfect site for a little harbour.

As for the building, Lord Dufferin appears to have taken an instant dislike to the design and asked his architect, Benjamin Ferrey, to do something about it. Ferrey wrote that he would try to devise some plan to take away the appearance of the large and small gables “to which your Lordship objects”.[5] I’m not sure that he succeeded.

The location of the coastguard station in his Sea Park would remain forever a thorn in Dufferin’s side. Even years later, in 1888, he was obviously still enraged when he wrote to his then agent “What on earth do they want a new house at the coastguard station for? Try to induce them to leave it alone. At present the boat house is an eyesore, and the new one with its vulgar architecture will spoil the appearance of the whole neighbourhood.”[6]

Whatever the outcome of that spat, the damage was probably done many years earlier when the building above us, with its dragon’s teeth gables, precipitated the abandonment of the costly sea park project in favour of the more lucrative development of Helen’s Bay village. Lord Dufferin’s diary entry in 1855 even notes that he “Rode to Grey Point and discussed with Thompson [his agent] the advisability of getting up a bathing town there”.[7]

[1] PRONI D1071/A/K/1/B/3/1 (24 November 1854)

[2] PRONI D1071/A/K/1/B/6/1 (11 February 1857)

[3] PRONI D1071/A/K/1/B/6/1 (11 February 1857)

[4] Lord Dufferin, Letters from high latitudes, ed. John Murray (1856)

[5] PRONI D1071/A/K/3/B/2/1 (November 1861)

[6] PRONI D1071/A/K/1/C/12/1 (4 April 1888)

[7] PRONI D1071/H/V/1/11 (18 September 1855)