Brochan House, Dogleap, Roe Valley Country Park, Limavady, Co Londonderry

Brochan House is a picturesque ruin situated at the end of Largy Bridge in Roe Valley Country Park, positioned on rocks to the northern side of the Dogleap. The building is of interest both as a piece of industrial archaeology associated with milling at Dog Leap and historically for its connection with famine relief work.

The structure is a three-storey former mill building with a single-storey elevation to the north and west adjacent to the approach road to the bridge. The walls are stone with brick lining to openings and stone quoins. The roof is gone and the building is overgrown with vegetation.

On the north elevation there are two semicircular openings (700mm and 450mm radius from ground level) centred on the façade, with a timber door near the western end. The windows are infilled with recent grills. The west gable features a similar semicircular window positioned off centre, with a door opening breaking the apex above. There are some brick repairs visible to the stone wall. The opposite east gable has one small opening at low level to the south, where the ground falls steeply to meet a stone wall above the river.

The south elevation, which overlooks the river, reveals the full height of the building. Two storeys of stone extend out over the river in a concrete-encased projection with a corrugated asbestos roof, dropping another storey in height to the river's edge. There are no obvious openings in the projection except at the base, where the concrete appears to have been repaired at least once. The stone building features a central group of aligned openings: a semicircular window at low level and a rectangular opening above, both trimmed in brick.

The building is known as the 'brochan house'. It is presumably the building mentioned in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1833–35 as the 'Bleach Mill in Deer Park', which recorded associated buildings including an engine house, rub-board house, boiling house, two drying lofts, two store houses, a broughan house (or eating house), and a carpenters workshop, all noted as being in good repair at that time. Country park literature claims the name derives from an oatmeal porridge called brochan (Irish "brathan") made here and distributed to the hungry during the famine, though the Ordnance Survey Memoirs indicate the name dates from an earlier period.

The building's location on the river's edge and the concrete extensions suggest it played a role beyond that of a simple eating house. Although not mentioned in 'Electricity from the Red River', the structure must have had some part to play in improvements to Dogleap farm carried out in the 1920s by Miss Dorothy Robinson, possibly as a source of water for a second hydraulic ram.