Bendhu is the strange white house above the twisting road down to Ballintoy Harbour. A Cornish art teacher named Newton Penprase started building it in 1936 and was still at it in 1952, mixing and pouring the whole thing by hand, bucket of cement by bucket of cement, into a stack of cubes, portholes, parapets, sunken rooms, cliff stairs and animal sculptures. Locals called it ‘the house that was never finished’, because every time it looked done Penprase found another view or idea and kept going. The name itself – Bendhu, or Bendoo, ‘dark place’ – is borrowed from the basalt cliff that walls in the little cove below.
Be clear about what it is, though: Bendhu is a private home and always has been. There is no visitor access and no safe stopping point at the house, so treat it as something to know about on your way to the coast rather than a destination in its own right.
The house and its builder
Penprase, born in Redruth in Cornwall in 1888, came to Northern Ireland to study and then teach at the Belfast College of Art, and found in the dramatic Antrim coast an echo of home. Rather than the local lime and stone, he worked in poured concrete, shaping an art deco composition by eye and without a single fixed plan, which is why it reads more as sculpture than as a conventional house. An accident in his later years stopped the building work, and Bendhu sat unfinished for a long stretch; he died in 1978, and later owners continued the work.
For all the official objections during its making, Bendhu was listed Grade B1 in 1992, and the present owners – who took it on in 1993 – have conserved it since. Ulster Architectural Heritage records how later owners continued the work and how the house came to be listed, and Northern Ireland Screen has archival footage and commentary. The society’s book Bendhu and its Builders, by Andrew Cowser, tells the story in full.
Seeing it
The house is a private residence, so the pleasure is in what can be seen from a distance: the clash of cubes, squares and ovals in smooth white concrete; the portholes set at odd heights; the narrow stairs that seem to climb the rock; the animal figures worked into the walls. Low light early or late in the day throws the geometry into relief and the white render plays off the sea behind it.
Practical information
- Access: The house is a private residence with no interior access, visitor centre or facilities. There is no visitor access or safe stopping point at the house. Respect the occupants’ privacy and keep the narrow harbour road clear.
- Parking: None at the house. Use the public parking at the harbour for a visit to the coast.
- Timing: Go in daylight; the road down to the harbour is narrow and twisting.
Pair it with the harbour itself, the Game of Thrones filming location below, and with Ballintoy Parish Church at the top of the hill. Carrick-a-Rede and the Giant’s Causeway are both a short drive west.