Remains of Moneyglass House, West of Union Lodge, 21 Ballymatoskerty Road, Toomebridge, Co Antrim, BT41 3PS

Remains of Moneyglass House

A freestanding ruinous Italianate portico, possibly designed by Sir Charles Lanyon, is all that remains of Moneyglass House. Although the main dwelling has been lost, the portico survives in comparatively good condition with fine ornamentation and continues to dominate an elevated position within the extensive estate grounds.

The structure is a three-bay-wide, single-bay-deep, single-height Neo-classical country house portico facing east, built around 1855 and located within the landscaped grounds of the Moneyglass Estate. All elevations except the western elevation (which originally adjoined the main house) share consistent features. The portico rests on a raised smooth-rendered plinth with corners defined by substantial V-jointed reticulated-rusticated sandstone impost piers. These support an arcade of round-headed arches on all elevations, with moulded imposts, archivolts, and reticulated keystones. The spandrels at arcade level are smooth-rendered. Above this runs a stringcourse-defined band of moulded console brackets supporting a moulded cornice, which is surmounted by a finely carved latticed sandstone parapet. The elaborate rustication and moulding are largely carved in sandstone, with brick construction faced over. The finely dressed aspects of the façade are completed in smooth render matching the stone in colour and appearance.

The east elevation displays three arches. The central arch is internally supported by two Tuscan columns on Scotia-moulded bases with bottom-third fluted shafts and Tuscan-moulded capitals. The parapet of the central bay contains a large heraldic cartouche. A single bay of the original country house extends to the west of the rear portico wall. This bay was rendered alongside the portico but now appears mostly as English Garden Wall-bonded red brick, containing a round-arched window. The south elevation presents a single arch wide, with a moulded archivolt and reticulated keystone supported on V-jointed reticulated-rusticated impost piers. The north elevation is identical to the south, though it displays the springing bricks from a collapsed arch at arcade height that once led into the main house.

The east elevation, which formerly abutted the main country house, remains unrendered with red brick walling and wrought-iron straps extending from its impost piers. The interior of the porch is plain-rendered to the spandrels and ashlar-faced to the eastern façade of the rear porch, which formed the entrance to the former house. A pier of the central arch bears a circular hole and two screw holes marking the former location of a doorbell.

Of the main house, only fragmented remains survive. One round-arched vaulted cellar chamber survives on axis with the porch. Various other wall foundations remain largely concealed by grass, along with exposed cellar workings and other underground structures.

Moneyglass House was set within the eighteenth-century Moneyglass demesne, a rural estate owned by the Jones family. The 1836 Townland Valuation records the estate owned by a Major Kennedy at that date. The 1833 Ordnance Survey memoirs describe a 1787 replacement house as being three storeys with two pillars in front topped by a balcony, though this description does not readily match early twentieth-century photographs by William Alfred Green (1870–1958) or correlate to the surviving Italianate portico, which appears to be mid-nineteenth-century Victorian work. In 1909, Robert Magill Young described the house as a handsome mid-nineteenth-century Italianate dwelling of two storeys over basement in the style of Sir Charles Lanyon, with the porch noted as "very characteristic of Lanyon," suggesting the house was either rebuilt or extensively remodelled during this period.

The 1833 Ordnance Survey map records a house, walled garden, small building on the present farmyard site, and stableblock, with remnants of an early formal layout to the demesne featuring radial paths to the northwest (gone by 1857) and a straight tree-lined avenue. By 1857, the house, farmyard complex, and stablecourt had been enlarged, and a stream had been dammed to create an ornamental lake as the demesne developed into a landscape park.

Three main phases of change are documented at Moneyglass House. W. M. Jones, the first recorded occupant, leased the estate from 15 April 1726 from French John O'Neill for a term of three lives at £25 per annum, renewable forever. He was second-generation in Ireland, descended from an ancient Welsh family that arrived during the reign of Charles II, and inspired Carolan's celebrated "Bumper Squire Jones." A replacement house was built in 1787 by Thomas Morres Jones Esq., with a third phase of development associated with Sir Charles Lanyon, known also to have worked on the gate lodge for the estate.

The portico stands surrounded by the formal landscape of the demesne.