Ardvarness Cottage, Cashel Road, Macosquin, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 4PW

Ardvarness Cottage is a symmetrical three-bay, one-and-a-half-storey detached Georgian villa with a single-storey abutment, built around 1800 and situated on the west side of Cashel Road to the south of Macosquin village, separated from it by the Macosquin bypass. The building has a rectangular plan with a projecting entrance bay to the front elevation and a semi-circular bay with a half-conical roof to the north. A single-storey abutment is attached to the east.

The roof is covered in natural slate with leaded ridges. Rendered chimneystacks with moulded sandstone caps are centrally positioned, and the single-storey abutment features terracotta crestings and a finial. Modern metal rooflights have been added to the front. Rainwater goods are aluminium, carried on projecting eaves. The external walling is painted smooth render, ruled-and-lined to the west elevation, with painted quoins. All windows are replacement timber sash with horns throughout.

The principal, south-facing elevation is symmetrically arranged around a central projection containing the doorcase. The flanking bays each carry a glazed spoked oculus above a six-over-six sash window set in moulded architraves with decorated keyblocks, plinth blocks, and projecting painted stone sills. The Georgian doorcase consists of fluted pilasters supporting a moulded and dentilled archivolt with a decorated keyblock. The door itself is a raised-and-fielded five-panel timber door flanked by sidelights and surmounted by a large timber bat-wing fanlight, accessed by a single sandstone step.

The west gable has a replacement bipartite three-over-three window at first-floor level, set in a moulded architrave with a projecting sill. The north elevation features a semi-circular bay at its centre containing a six-over-six tripartite bowed window with two-over-two sidelights, with similar windows to the flanking bays. The east gable has a window matching that on the west gable. The single-storey abutment adjoins the main house at ground-floor level on the left. On the south elevation of this abutment there are two three-over-three replacement sash windows flanking a replacement timber-sheeted entrance door; the north elevation has a tripartite timber window and a two-over-four window. A modern conservatory abuts the east gable of the abutment.

The building has a well-documented history. The earliest known record of the cottage dates to the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map of 1830, which depicted it as a T-shaped building. The contemporary Ordnance Survey Memoirs record it then under the name Ardvarness House, describing it as a "neat thatched house, two-storeys high and embellished with a short avenue and some trees." The Townland Valuations of around 1830 record it as the seat of Richard Bennett Esquire, with a property value of £14 10s. that included an engine house to the south. There is a notable naming confusion in the historical record: the building now known as Ardvarness Cottage was called Ardvarness House in the 19th century, while the neighbouring building to the west — a two-storey dwelling erected in 1810 by Hugh Ovans Esquire — was then known as Ardvarness Cottage but is now called Ardvarness House.

By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1856, Richard Bennett had vacated the property and a Miss Mary Bennett was recorded as leasing it from the Richardson estate, with the cottage valued at £9 and its south-eastern outbuilding — described as a threshing mill — valued at £1 5s. separately. Miss Bennett remained at the cottage until 1866, when a Reverend William Sturgeon took up residence; he is believed to have been a minister of Macosquin Presbyterian Church rather than a rector of St. Mary's Church. The threshing mill had been abandoned by this time. Reverend Sturgeon left around 1874, followed briefly by a Reverend Joseph Keane, and by around 1881 the property had passed to a Mr. John Mooney. The 1901 Census records John Mooney, then aged 71 and a widowed farmer and miller, living at Ardvarness with his children and grandchildren. At that time the building was classified as a second-class dwelling with four rooms and retained its original thatched roof. The farm buildings at that time included a stable, two cow houses, a piggery, a barn, and numerous sheds.

The third edition of the Ordnance Survey map shows that the single-storey extension to the east elevation had been added by at least 1904, the same year John Mooney purchased the cottage outright from the Richardson estate. John Mooney vacated the property in 1909, presumably on his death, and his son Robert Mooney succeeded him. The 1911 Census confirms that the building still retained its original thatched roof at that date. Robert Mooney continued in residence until at least 1935, when the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland set the total rateable value at £10. By 1956 the property had passed to a Mr. William Moore, and in 1966 ownership transferred to a Mr. James Morrow; by the close of the second revaluation in 1972 the rateable value had risen to £38. The cottage was listed in 1976. The modern conservatory abutting the single-storey extension was constructed after 1972, as it does not appear on the Ordnance Survey map of that year. The original thatched roof had been replaced with the current slate covering by the time of the first survey photograph in 1974. A comprehensive restoration was carried out in the latter part of the 20th century; replacement fabric throughout is of appropriate quality and character, and the building retains the integrity of its original Georgian design despite these modern interventions. The former threshing mill, originally to the south-east of the farmhouse, still stands but is in a state of disrepair with its original roof replaced by corrugated iron.

The setting is mature and largely unspoiled. The house is accessed from Cashel Road via a tarmacadamed lane shared with a modern two-storey neighbouring dwelling, with replacement stone entrance walls and square piers with a cattle grid at the road. A secondary entrance to the west has replacement rubblestone square piers with stone caps surmounted by iron lamps. The front of the house is gravelled, with a mature garden to the south and a large open field between the house and the road to the north. A rubblestone wall with remnants of lime render runs north to south between the main house and the single-storey abutment, and a rubblestone garden wall to the west retains an original cast-iron latch gate at the gable of the house. A slated and rendered double garage stands to the east of the site.