Drumrane Villa, 60 Drumrane Road, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 9LB

Drumrane Villa is a forceful late Victorian small villa located on the east side of Drumrane Road at its junction with a minor road near Limavady. The building dates from the 1820s–1830s with significant extensions and improvements made around the 1890s.

The house presents a composition of part single storey, one and a half and two storeys. Its bold architectural form is expressed through canted bays, low pitched and faceted slated roofs, strained symmetry, and dominant chimney stacks, with good eaves detail. The design represents facade architecture applied to the main front and ends, while the rear is almost devoid of architectural pretensions except for the short return of the eaves. The plan form is one room deep, probably dictated by the former building configuration.

The main front is one and a half storeys with five bays, and the back return rises to two storeys. Two small single storey extensions have been added to the rear. The walls are smooth rendered and cream painted, with natural slated roofs. The end rooms form full width canted bays to the main facade, with faceted roofs. The roof ridges over these bays run at right angles to the roof over the centre three bays, so that externally they read as lateral pavilions. The almost central projecting entrance porch has a room above with a gabled roof and a pair of small semi-circular windows. Two prominent rendered chimney stacks rise from the ridge of the central roof, each adorned with two tall decorated pots.

Most windows are two-pane sash type, with three to each canted bay and one to the gabled entrance porch. The entrance door is in the side with a narrower sash window opposite. On either side of the porch is a sash window lighting the corridor hall, each over which stands a straight cornice supported on moulded brackets. The bold eaves with ogee cast iron gutter runs along the front and sides and partly returns on the gables, neatly stopped. Cills to the bays form a continuous string course but are not continued elsewhere. Rolled lead hip is used on faceted roofs over the bays; other hips and ridges are clay tiles.

The interior shows an attempt at creating pleasing proportioned rooms in the dining and sitting spaces, with good cornices and pelmeted timber cornices to curtains in the bays. Good fireplaces are present throughout, apart from a later change to the dining room fireplace. The corridor hall is enhanced by segmental arches, architraves and panelling. The interior has not otherwise altered since its improvement.

The two storey back return has no architectural pretensions and is finished with two gables, chimney and slated roof with no eaves. A narrow garden runs the full length of the house and beyond on each side. At the road boundary stands a low wall with coping and good decorative cast iron railing, with pedestrian and vehicular gates.

To the north of the house stands a single storey stone built and slated cottage and outhouse, whitewashed, at right angles and linked by a screen wall. To the rear is a two storey coach house and barn built of stone with brick trim and whitewashed. Over the centrally placed doors is a gablet containing a hoisting beam. These adjoining buildings with the house enclose a yard.

Ordnance Survey sheets from 1831 and 1848 show a house with back return and an adjacent cottage at right angles, with the lane to the property passing between the two. By 1848 the back return was established. Griffiths Valuation records Robert C Irwin here in 1858. The house appears to have been extended and improved around the 1890s, and the two storey coach house to the rear was built at this time, with the laneway subsequently changed. The details of the house suggest the work of Derry architect William Barker, who undertook work to Presbyterian churches in the Glack Ward area.

According to the 1998 occupant, the property had been in her ownership for 40 years, previously owned by Miss Oliver, and before that by the Irwins. Robert C Irwin drove by pony and trap to his draper business in Derry; his driver dwelt in the cottage. An Irwin, draper, operated at Ferryquay Street in Derry at the corner of Upper Linenhall Street, a property later demolished when Woolworth & Co acquired it in the 1960s.