Presbyterian Church, Seacoast Road, Magilligan, Limavady, Co Londonderry

Presbyterian Church, Seacoast Road, Magilligan

A sturdy mid-19th century simple hall church of basalt with a later bell tower, built between 1863 and 1879. The architect was Samuel Kilpatrick of Coleraine and the builder was Richard Gaily of Londonderry. The foundation stone was laid in 1863 by Sir Frederick Wentworth Heygate, and the building cost £600. The new church was constructed around an earlier church established on the site in 1803 (which measured 52 feet by 25 feet, contained 34 pews, and had 5 windows on one side and one in the end), allowing the old building to be used until the new was completed.

The church measures approximately 23 metres by 11½ metres externally and consists of basalt walls with a pitched natural slated roof spanning three bays. The three-bay structure features widely spaced round-headed windows of eight panes each, trimmed with painted sandstone in the Gibbsian manner, though the sandstone is flush with the random rubble basalt walls. The four corners of the church are decorated with painted quoin stones.

The entrance gable at the west end contains a central entrance door which forms the centre of the bell tower. This gable features tall shouldered buttresses and round-headed windows on either side. A three-stage square tower pierces the roof ridge, featuring a tall belfry with slender round-headed openings on all four sides, similarly trimmed with white painted sandstone, as are the quoin stones. The tower is crowned with crenellations and four pinnacles. The roof is trimmed with plain moulded sandstone barge stones at the gable ends. Gutters and downpipes are of cast iron.

In 1934, a bell tower containing a bell was constructed and donated by Miss Cather in memory of Reverend H Butler. During this construction the ceiling fell and was replaced with a pitch pine ceiling. The church is said to have originally possessed a "graceful belfry".

A single-storey minister's room adjoins the church, linking it to the Magilligan Lecture Hall of 1923 and a former school building predating 1911.

The church is sited close to Seacoast Road with graveyards on three sides. On the road side there is a low boundary wall with cast iron railing and two sets of gates. A row of mature trees along the side of the graveyard separates it from an adjacent laneway.

Memorials within the church include a marble slab to the Hamilton sisters, who gave £300 for ground maintenance; a marble slab erected by Sir Frederick Heygate in memory of his land steward Gavin Craig, who came from Maybole, Scotland (Craig's great grandson later became moderator of the General Assembly in 1980); and a brass plaque war memorial for 1914–1919.