Walled Gardens, Moneyglass Demesne, Duneane Road, Toomebridge, Co Antrim, BT41 3PS

Two adjoining walled gardens at Moneyglass Demesne that retain their original form and setting. The vast size of the walled gardens is notable. The collection of estate structures remains quite complete despite the country house being lost nearly a century ago. The walls are of common type with no ancillary structures to add further interest.

The walled garden features consist of two adjoining gardens and three bridges, built before 1832 and remodelled around 1850. A portico stands at the centre of the estate at the end of a two-branched avenue leading from the southeast. The main walled garden is located to the northeast of the portico with a stable yard within the southeast corner and a farmyard abutting the west end of the south elevation. The second walled garden adjoins the first to the west.

The first walled garden is square in plan, built around 1800 and remodelled around 1850. The walling is random rubble stone with saddleback coping to a height of three metres. The second walled garden is rectangular in plan. The central section of the west elevation of the second walled garden walling is red brick, the remains of a demolished estate outbuilding. Farmyard buildings abut the south elevations of both gardens and have slit openings with red brick jambs. A stable yard abuts the internal southeast corner of the first walled garden. Both gardens are now pastureland.

The two vast walled gardens were originally formally arranged and comprise an area of approximately five acres. Reputedly, the larger garden was an orchard and the smaller was for vegetables. The brick ruined section to the west of the second walled garden was reputedly an old laundry house.

The 1833 Ordnance Survey map shows a house, a walled garden, a small building on the present farmyard site, and a stable block with an extended east block located to the northeast. By the 1857 Ordnance Survey, the house, farmyard complex, and stable court had been enlarged and a stream dammed to create an ornamental lake. Added to the east block of the stable court visible in the 1833 map was the present quadrangle of four blocks. Sir Charles Lanyon is recorded to have rebuilt the estate gate lodges in the mid 1850s and is likely to have worked on the house and estate buildings. According to the Ordnance Survey Memoirs, the house was built in 1787 by Thomas Morres Jones Esquire, replacing an earlier house. Lendrick's Map of 1782 records Moneyglass as the seat of Thomas M. Jones Esquire. An earlier ancestor, Mr William Morres Jones, dwelt as the first recorded occupant of Moneyglass. The 1836 Townland Valuation records the estate as being owned by a Major Kennedy.

Another estate structure, a mausoleum to the Jones family located to the east, was demolished without trace in the mid twentieth century after being ransacked in the early twentieth century during the same period the country house was destroyed. The mausoleum was raided for rich lead-lined coffins; human remains were later transferred to Duneane Presbyterian Church.