County Boundary Stone, 27 Ballywindelland Road, Ballywindelland Lower, Ballymoney, Co Londonderry, BT53 6QT

County Boundary Stone, Ballywindelland Road

This is a small cast or stamped concrete boundary marker, approximately 300 by 600 by 150 millimetres, positioned in a dense grass verge on the north side of Ballywindelland Road, five kilometres north-west of Ballymoney and seven and a half kilometres south-east of Coleraine. The marker faces north-east and tilts slightly backwards to the south-west, with a mature hedgerow immediately behind it.

The front face bears lettering approximately 25 to 35 millimetres high, reading "COUNTY BOUNDARY ANTRIM DERRY". The words "ANTRIM" and "DERRY" are interlaced horizontally with the vertical word "Boundary", using the letters "A" and "Y" as shared elements. The concrete surface is lightly weathered with edge damage evident on both front and rear faces. The base is not visible.

This stone is one of six similar markers set along rural roadsides in the area north and west of Ballymoney and east and south of Coleraine, Portstewart and Portrush, all demarcating the land boundary between Counties Antrim and Londonderry, particularly at points where the direction of the boundary line changes. The age of these markers is uncertain, but their concrete construction and the styling of the inscriptions suggest they date from the very late 19th or early 20th century, possibly associated with the introduction of County Councils following the 1898 Local Government (Ireland) Act. Their origins appear to have been obscure by 1940, when a similar stone was photographed and captioned as "A curious county boundary stone" in the Belfast Telegraph. This particular example first appears marked on the Ordnance Survey map of 1970. At least one other such marker, formerly on Newbridge Road north-west of Ballymoney, was removed around 2020. Despite their small size and simple detailing, these unusual boundary markers are of local and historical importance and rarity.