The Old Rectory, Glenshane Road, Dungiven, Co Londonderry, BT47

The Old Rectory, Glenshane Road, Dungiven

An early 19th-century rectory in Georgian style, built in 1817 for the Reverend Alexander Ross, who became rector in 1810 and served for 39 years. The house was constructed at a cost of £2,086, 3 shillings and 1 penny, with attached Glebe land of 160 hectares. The Memoirs of Ireland described it as "good and substantial".

The building is a two-storey house with basement and attic floor, featuring a hipped roof all round with central chimney stacks. Walls are of mixed coursed ashlar and random rubble with rendering. The house remains relatively unchanged apart from the second back return.

The entrance front faces north-west and is three bays wide, displaying the peculiar asymmetry characteristic of the design. A semi-circular plain fanlight doorway is positioned slightly off-centre. To the east is a single sliding sash 12-pane window; the west side has a blank wall. At first floor are two sliding sash 12-pane windows, with the eastern window centred over the floor below and the other arranged symmetrically on the opposite side. The entrance door has six fielded panels with a wood plain architrave and square head, separating a fanlight without astragals. Walls are of ashlar sandstone with strap pointing, with stones abutting openings roughly tooled with widely spaced lines. Sandstone cills are tooled on face and window reveals finished in smooth plaster. A chamfered sandstone projecting stringcourse runs at ground floor level. Plain corbel courses support slight eaves with half-round guttering. A shallow sandstone step marks the front door. The front wall is almost entirely covered in creeper.

The roof is slated with Bangor blue slates, hipped with lead hips and clay ridge tile. Large, high chimney stacks with smooth plastered and unpainted finish feature two capping courses with five chimney pots each, repeated at the rear.

The north-east elevation is four bays wide and two metres wider than the front, with four sliding sash 12-pane windows on each floor, arranged symmetrically. Ground floor windows are slightly taller. At basement level, exposed to a narrow area, are four sliding sash 9-pane windows. The wall is faced with rough ashlar sandstone with red handmade brick trim to all window openings. Lintels over basement and ground floor windows are square-headed in sandstone; first floor lintels are flat-headed with brick trim. Window reveals are plastered. A chamfered projecting sandstone plinth course runs at ground floor level, with a plain sandstone corbel course at the eaves supported by metal brackets holding a half-round gutter. Cast-iron round downpipes serve the gutters. Two runs of protective metal railing protect the basement areas at each end. A single-storey back return, roughcast rendered, features a single sliding sash 12-pane window with sandstone cill. This return is slated but gabled, in contrast to the main roof.

The south-east and rear elevation is three bays wide with two back returns. The eastern return is single-storey and gabled, with a single sliding sash 4-pane window positioned off-centre. On the west elevation of this back return is a rear door with a 6-pane fanlight above. All walls are plastered. The second back return is narrow, part two-storey and part single-storey, with a sliding sash 6-pane window in each gable. All walls have been recently plastered with slate overhang at the barges.

The main rear wall between the back returns has a single 2-pane metal window at ground floor. Above this is a sliding sash 12-pane window, and above that again, a half dormer with a pair of 6-pane casements serving the attic. The rear wall has been recently roughcast rendered. Gutters are as before, with a projecting corbel course below the eaves. The roof is slated with hips and ridge tiles matching the front. A matching chimney stack is centred on the ridge. The top floor of the narrow back return originally housed a large water tank.

External steps provide access to a small basement area between the returns, paved with large quarries and protected all round with metal railing. A doorway provides access to the basement.

The south-west elevation is three bays wide with sliding sash 12-pane windows on each floor. At each storey is a central sliding sash 12-pane window serving the stair landing, with a sliding sash 12-pane window below it. The head of the staircase window does not align with those on either side at first floor level. The west wall receives similar treatment to the east wall but without brick trim to the windows. The roof is identical. The wall is almost entirely covered with creeper. The west back return continues in line with the main wall. A garden wall with a segmented arch doorway projects at right angles and then turns to proceed to the stableyard. No basement windows are visible on the west or north sides.

The former rectory crowns the top of a small hill in the townland of Derrychier and presently occupies eight hectares of ground, much covered with trees and shrubbery. A long winding avenue approaches from the Glenshane Road. Like many larger country houses in the area, the principal elevation originally faced northerly to obtain a view of the fine panorama including Binevenagh headland, though this view is now obscured by surrounding trees. In the past, domestic water was supplied by an open trench aqueduct approaching from the south-west. Former grounds included pleasant gardens laid out in a large oval, visible on the Ordnance Survey Map of 1830 (Londonderry sheet 30), with paths leading to the church.

In 1986, a report by A Coey recommended replacement of the original small Irish pegged slates. This was undertaken with Bangor blue slates, completed in 1993 when the rear wall plasterwork was also undertaken.