Dungiven Castle, Main Street, Dungiven, Co Londonderry, BT47 4LF

Dungiven Castle is an early Victorian neo-Gothic castle built in 1839, standing on the site of an earlier late 17th-century fortification on Main Street, Dungiven, County Londonderry. It was built by Robert Ogilby of Pellipar, agent of the Skinners' Company, though he never occupied it and continued to reside at Pellipar House. The castle is also a scheduled monument. The architect is thought to have been Stewart Gordon (died 1860), who may also have designed the Bishop Street front of Derry Gaol (now largely demolished), and a similarity between the principal facades of the two buildings has been noted. Derry Gaol was built in 1790, with towers added to its Bishop Street front between approximately 1819 and 1824.

The building is a two-storey, eleven-bay linear castle constructed in regular coursed sandstone ashlar, with Irish battlements, a central octagonal tower, and battlemented semi-circular flanking towers at the extremities of the main south elevation. A still smaller crenellated tower occupies the centre of the rear elevation. The castle occupies a commanding position overlooking the River Roe, and its principal formal elevation faces south, where gardens have been partly reinstated and complement the symmetry of the arrangement. Its impact on Dungiven Main Street to the north is reduced, as it is partly obscured by a cattle market shed and a public house.

The north façade, facing Main Street, is flanked by the remains of a bawn wall (listed separately as HB02/06/003B), which may originally have enclosed an approximately square courtyard between the castle and the street. This elevation features a centrally placed circular tower. At ground level, a long linear twelve-pane fixed window with fine astragals has been installed; directly above it, a twelve-pane sash window of more standard height (approximately 1,200mm) occupies a similar width. The façade is symmetrical about the tower. The entrance is to the side of the tower through a single-leaf door. Five bays to each side contain windows at ground and first-floor level, equally spaced. The central bay of each group of five has a door opening at first-floor level, where an escape stair is planned. On the roof ridge near this point sits a five-pot rendered chimney stack, with another at the gable. The west gable has no windows and has recently been rebuilt from eaves level upwards in sandstone ashlar matching the original. A two-storey battlemented flanker projects to the south-west, with a small section of bawn wall to the north.

The main south elevation is the formal face of the building. The flanking towers at each end have narrow single-pane-wide windows with hood mouldings, each with three windows facing south, south-east, and south-west respectively. Five bays of windows separate the flankers from the central tower. The ground-floor windows are recently installed twelve-pane sashes with hood mouldings. A string course unites the cills of the smaller first-floor windows, which have nine panes and are also fitted with hood mouldings. A cornice moulding runs along the base of the battlemented parapet; some sections are damaged, and while portions have been replaced during the current renovation, others have been left as found. The central octagonal tower projects as far from the façade as the flankers. It features a gothic-arched entrance door with fanlight (yet to be installed at the time of survey), flanked by two sidelights and topped by a hood moulding. A narrow gothic window above follows the same arrangement. Sash windows in the walls to either side of the tower also remained to be installed at the time of survey. Heavy machicolations replace the cornice at the base of the battlements on this tower.

The windows throughout the building were originally described in an earlier survey as two-light marginal double-hung sashes. An inappropriate porch was noted as having been added adjacent to the rear tower, though this was recorded prior to the current restoration works.

The bawn walls are a significant survival. The east and west walls of the bawn remain, together with a few of the arches that supported the gun platforms. The original castle on this site was known as the King's House and was built in the early 17th century. Lewis's Topographical Dictionary refers to "extensive ruins of a castle and bawn, built in 1618, by the Skinners' Company." Curl's The Londonderry Plantation 1609–1914 suggests that a new castle was probably built at the top of the town sometime before the church was erected in 1711, and that stone from the fortified house at the Priory site may have been used in its construction.

An illustration in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs shows a long single-storey building with engaged circular towers at each end, roofless, with an asymmetrical arrangement of windows and door openings, titled "Lady Cooke's Castle." Lady Cooke is supposed to have died around 1688, suggesting the earlier structure dates from the second half of the 17th century. The present building may therefore stand on its foundations. A map drawn in 1792 by J. Morton shows the castle approached by an avenue from Main Street, with ornamental gardens on either side.

Robert Ogilby rebuilt the castle as a two-storey structure in 1839, but there is no record of any Ogilby ever living there. After the lease of the manor reverted to the Skinners' Company in 1873, the Company had their surveyor Burnell draw up plans for restoration; the proposed ground-floor arrangement showed a handsome suite of rooms, with three returns on the north-east side similar to those shown on the Morton map. Burnell's proposals were not carried forward. In 1890, Robert Alexander Ogilby purchased the castle and grounds from the Skinners' Company. In 1925, an American named James McCloskey bought the property, which was converted into four flats. Dancing functions took place in the castle from 1930, and in 1962 a ballroom extension was erected. Limavady District Council acquired the property and part of the bawn enclosure in the 1980s. The building was first listed in March 1975 but delisted in September 1986 at the request of Limavady District Council due to the dangerous state of the structure. The Glenshane Community Development Association Ltd acquired the castle in 1991, and it was relisted in November 1995. Funding was subsequently obtained from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and works were carried out to adapt the building as a hostel, with architects Keith Gilmour of Moneymore (Manor Architects) and builders McCloskey & O'Kane of Limavady.

The castle has a splendid setting when viewed from the south and from the River Roe. Its north elevation to Main Street is haphazard in appearance and obscured by the modern cattle mart shed. Remains of the bawn walls still stand but cannot be properly appreciated due to the scale of adjoining development.