Drenagh House, 15 Dowland Road, Fruithill, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 0HP

Drenagh House is an imposing large Victorian country house built around 1840 in a classical manner, combining restrained Georgian taste externally with fine decorative and architectural detailing internally. It was the first country house commission of the eminent architect Charles Lanyon (1812-89), and enjoys a handsome setting within a well-landscaped demesne.

The main building is a large two-storey structure faced in ashlar sandstone with a slated roof and lead ridges and hips. The south-east facade features a single-storey tetrastyle Ionic portico with double columns at each side in the centre of a five-bay block. These columns are unfluted and taper gracefully from base to necking, decorated with classical motifs. The portico supports an entablature with detailed cornice, above which rises a balustrade returned to the main plane of the facade. Though crisply detailed, the frieze is marred by washers of tiebars ensuring the portico does not part company with the main wall. The entrance door has a semi-circular fanlight with narrow round-headed windows on either side. The outer columns are reflected on the main wall by double pilasters with Ionic capitals and necking.

Two string courses encompass the principal facades between ground and first-floor windows: one aligns with the cills of the upper windows, while the other continues the line of the entrance portico cornice. The ground-floor windows are restrained Georgian affairs with merely a chamfer running along the outer edges of the reveals. The higher windows feature an architrave with curved lugged bottoms and thin cornices on top. Above, the wall terminates in a full entablature, with the cornice displaying details from the portico. Open balustrading in four bays crowns the composition, with solid infill in the centre piece—the most successful composition of the house. Its symmetry is contested by a much lower two-storey six-bay wing to the north-east, similarly faced in sandstone with smaller but still twelve-pane windows.

The south-west facade has six bays with the centre two forming a positive breakfront, decorated unfortunately with a distyle arrangement of Roman Doric pilasters above which rises an unadorned pediment. The balustrading carries round this side, stopping momentarily at the pediment. To the north-west, Lanyon becomes more restrained: the five-bay facade is modelled only by two almost clumsy canted bays on either side of a ground-floor french window with elliptical fanlight, giving access to a vast stretch of flat lawn bounded eventually by a lengthy balustraded wall. Beyond the wall a ha-ha separates it from the pleasant rolling landscape of the demesne.

To the north-east lie a lower wing of the northern return and further extensions providing offices and a land steward's house. The northerly return is not without architectural interest. Its north-east side is punctuated by a centrally-placed breakfront gateway with elliptical arch, above which rises a three-storey section terminated with a plain pediment containing a clock face. This facade is faced in pink ashlar sandstone, seven bays wide, with storey heights defined by plain and moulded stringcourses. Through the gateway is a paved court surrounded by the more utilitarian offices of the house. Three walls here are finished in rubble stonework with brick-trimmed openings; that next the main house has smooth rendered and painted finish. Semi-circular depressions to basement windows and outside steps leading to a basement (which extends under one-third of the main part of the house) are visible in the courtyard.

The property of Drenagh, formerly known as Fruithill, was inherited by Colonel Robert McCausland, agent of William Conolly (d. 1729), who had purchased the estate from the Phillips family. Conolly, a former Speaker of the Irish Parliament who acquired his wealth through buying and selling estates, established the property. McCausland erected the first house several hundred yards south-east of the present edifice overlooking the Glen Plantation around the 1730s. This house was extended in 1796 and, though described in Ordnance Survey Memoirs as "good and commodious," was also considered old-fashioned. Nevertheless it had a fine demesne with well-laid-out walks and plantations. The walled garden of that period is still retained, along with one barn and a gardener's house. The old house had a different avenue approach from the old Coleraine Road (now Dowland Road), still discernible from early maps.

Before the old house was abandoned, a new avenue approach was made from the new Coleraine Road (now Broad Road), following a more romantic route adhering to the Robinsonian approach to gardening and landscape. Around 1830, W. Hargrave was commissioned to consider designs for a new house, which was to be three-storey with canted bays. However, before these could materialize, both McCausland and Hargrave died. The present gate lodge, known as Logan's Lodge or the east lodge, dating to around 1830, is all that was built of Hargrave's designs. The next heir commissioned Charles Lanyon, who arrived in County Antrim as surveyor in 1836, to prepare designs for the house, offices and outhouses. These appear to have reached fruition around 1840. At the same time, the west avenue approach was changed and the west lodge was built to Lanyon's plans. Pleasant gardens were extended in the Glen with a viewing platform featuring an impressive niche and fountain below, beyond a pool and parterre (now much overgrown). Nothing remains of the former house.