Tamlaghtard Rectory, 4 Duncrun Road, Glebe, Magilligan, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 0JD

Tamlaghtard Rectory

An austere mid-Georgian style house with notable plaster and joinery details, particularly the window sashes, linings, architraves, panelled doors with lugged architraves, good stair balustrading, and several fine fireplaces. The building has been sensitively restored in recent times.

The house is six bays wide, two storeys tall, with roughcast rendered walls and a two-storey back return forming an L-shaped plan. Beneath the main part lies a basement, and above an attic storey. The building appears originally to have been a five-bay symmetrically composed house with a central fanlighted doorway. A sixth bay was added later to the south, along with a projecting porch to the main entrance. The slated roof features interlocking metal ridge tiles with three roof lights over the five-bay rear section and a gable window inserted in the extended gable. Three chimney stacks rise through the roofline, with chimneys at each gable and another at the end of the fifth bay. The roof has little eave overhang and an ogee gutter.

The ground and first floor windows are nearly identical, each featuring two sashes subdivided into six panes. The sashes of the southern bay are slightly wider than the others and remain in good order, retaining all their Georgian characteristics. The main doors are panelled and painted. Window reveals are smooth. The projecting porch is smooth rendered and painted, with a wide single door in each flanking wall and a sash window in the centre of the other wall. Pilasters frame the walls, topped with white plaster heads (recent additions).

The house sits on level ground of approximately 0.8 hectares with mature trees dotting the lawn. It is approached by a curving sweeping avenue from the south-east on Duncrun Road. A roofless two-storey barn stands at right angles to the main house's south gable, a little removed, forming a rear courtyard completed by the back return and a west wall. Against this wall stand the remains of lower walls of a glass house, now used as an outdoor dining area. The ground floor of the back return serves as tea-rooms and sits several steps below the main ground floor.

Historical records show conflicting dates for the house's construction. Leslie's account records the Glebe house as built in 1786, and notes that in 1824 it sat within 20 acres of Glebe land. The Ordnance Survey map indicates a construction date of 1774, recording that "on the Glebe is a substantial house and offices built about the year 1774 by the Rev. Alexander Skipton it is used as a landmark by vessels passing to and from Derry on Lough Foyle". The additional bay was probably added around 1850. The property remained empty until 1996, though it continued to be used as an office by the visiting Rector. The present owner has undertaken renovation and restoration of both the house and the outhouses.