Bellarena House, Seacoast Road, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 OHZ

Bellarena House is a late Georgian country house with early Victorian additions, situated on the banks of the River Roe in the parish of Ardmagilligan alias Tamlaghtard. The main block was built in two phases — the first in 1797 by Marcus McCausland, who had changed his name to Gage upon inheriting through his mother, and the second in 1822 by Conolly Gage, who created the library and reworked the third floor at the rear. In the late 1830s, the architect Charles Lanyon (1812–1889) remodelled the entrance hall, created the billiard room bay, remodelled the main reception rooms, and added the projecting porch — all at the request of Conolly Gage's wife Henrietta, whose sister Marianne, married to Marcus McCausland, had engaged the same Lanyon to rebuild Drenagh. The house is a triple-pile structure, meaning it has three parallel ranges of accommodation running back from the main front, producing two internal valleys in the roof.

The principal, south-facing facade is five bays wide and two storeys tall, built in roughly coursed basalt with plain and chamfered sandstone quoins. At the centre is a semi-circular ashlar sandstone porch added by Lanyon, crowned with a plain frieze and a moderately projecting cornice with a low parapet above. The frieze and cornice step forward slightly to rest on single three-quarter engaged Ionic columns on either side of the double entrance doors. The side windows of the porch have flat pilasters on either side with frieze and cornice above, and a semi-circular architrave crowns the central window. The whole porch is painted white. Above the porch entrance is an ill-proportioned wide Venetian window. The Georgian sash windows flanking the ground-floor entrance are each of twelve panes, with delightfully slender astragals giving an elegant character to the glazing, particularly at ground-floor level. The first-floor windows have nine panes each. All window cills are of sandstone. A sandstone cornice with two running mouldings rises above the central Venetian window to form an open pediment. A low plain sandstone parapet sits above, stopping at either side of the pediment and not returning around the sides of the building.

The east facade has five bays, the centrepiece of which is a forceful canted bay, two storeys high, in ashlar sandstone. The remaining walling is similar to the south front, though without the parapet, except above the canted bay. On the east side the slated roof returns in a single plane rather than showing individual hips, giving the elevation a heavy appearance, with a roof pitch of at least 30 degrees maintaining the ridge line of the south front. At the time of survey this facade was screened with scaffolding and netting.

The west facade shows variation in window arrangement due to changes in floor levels and the projection of the north pile of the house. The central pile on this side contains the library, which begins at first-floor level and rises through two floors; its windows are taller than elsewhere, with fifteen panes each and segmental heads. The north pile has three full floors throughout, and headroom is achieved here by the introduction of square-headed dormers. Between the west wing and the library there is a small projecting block containing toilets on the ground and first floors and an exit door. From the west it is easy to read the triple-pile roof form, with its two valleys and hips; the front pile is the widest of the three, and the west wing is a little narrower. The sandstone cornice visible on the south front disappears on the west and south sides of the wing.

The north facade is asymmetrical because of the three-bay wing; the original block here is only four bays wide and has two back doors, one in each end bay. The difference in ridge lines between the original block and the wing is clearly visible from this elevation. The coursed basalt stonework is used consistently on all facades and at the rear, contained by sandstone quoins similar to those on the front and west wing.

The roofs have been completely re-slated in grey slate as part of a thorough restoration carried out in the five years prior to the survey, which most likely also involved alterations to the roof timbers. Ridges and hips are finished in lead. The numerous chimneys — some in ashlar stonework, others in smooth render — include those on the south front, which are symmetrically arranged on either side of the staircase hall. The dark basalt walling helps to reduce the visual impact of the many black downpipes.

The house is set in flat terrain and approached by a long sweeping avenue from the east off Seacoast Road. Wide expanses of smooth lawn, handsomely planted with trees and shrubs, extend in front of and to both sides of the house. The estate has been greatly reduced in size; what remains is principally pleasure garden. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1835 record the demesne as being "kept in the most exact order and with great taste," with a two-acre walled garden and orchard "in the highest state of cultivation" containing all kinds of fruits and flowers together with extensive hothouses for grapes. The walled garden and a viewing gazebo, now outside the present estate boundary, are both shown on the pre-1831 Ordnance Survey.

The wider complex comprises several distinct parts. To the rear is a courtyard enclosed by outbuildings, including a splendid two-storey gateway range directly opposite the rear of the house. This features five segmental brick arches, the central one forming the main access, with a white timber-clad clock pedestal above, crowned with a copper-clad steeple. The clock tower and steeple are not shown on the 1831 Ordnance Survey sheet. There is also an L-shaped byre and boiler block, and a brick-built ice house set a little apart from the courtyard, with a brick-domed interior and a hatch at the apex that once received ice. A small pond with fountain and some planting occupies part of the rear courtyard. The two-storey range of buildings to the west was the oldest part of the outbuilding complex but has been completely rebuilt. All outbuilding roofs have been re-slated with timbers renewed where necessary.

The rear entrance gate lodge was built around 1860. The main gate lodge on Seacoast Road dates from around 1920 and replaced a pair of gate lodges of 1797; the gates and railings were probably updated at the same time.

The land of the Bellarena Estate was leased from the Bishop of Derry in 1603 by William Gage, followed by John Gage, and remained in the family — though the surname changed to Heygate through the marriage of Conolly Gage's daughter Marianne to Sir Frederick Heygate in 1851. The 4th Baronet, Sir John Heygate, was a novelist and journalist who married, as his first wife, the Hon. Evelyn, daughter of Lord Burghclere, who had previously been the first wife of the writer Evelyn Waugh. Sir John Heygate, 4th Baronet, died in 1976, after which the property and its contents were sold. The present owners acquired the house around 1990. The architect for the recent restoration was Caroline Dickson; the contractor was Sidney Gamble of Strabane.