The Ferns (Formerly Umbra), 635 Seacoast Road, Magilligan, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 0LH

The Ferns (formerly Umbra)

A late Victorian house created by adding to an earlier cottage, positioned in a superb setting overlooking the north Atlantic.

The building comprises two principal elements. The front section is a single-storey narrow house five bays long, with roughcast rendered walls (some recently redone) and a natural slate roof topped by four stone chimneys. Behind it, separated by approximately three metres, stands a shorter four-bay house, slightly narrower, with a natural slate roof and three smooth rendered chimneys. The space between the two buildings is roofed over. The west end of the front part returns to present a reasonable facade to the entrance drive.

All roofs of the main house are gabled with decorated bargeboards carrying apex finials and reverse finials at the lower ends. Behind the second house are extensions: one with a pitched slated roof and another with a lean-to roof kept in the same plane as the adjacent pitched roof. Rooflights are extensively used to provide daylight to the internal spaces.

The entrance door is positioned at the eastern end between the two main houses, opposite the driveway. The centre room of the front house is a dining room which projects forward with a gable decorated with curly bargeboards and vertical finials. It features a tripartite window with round heads, the centre light higher than the others in the manner of a Venetian window, with no opening lights apparent. A door is set in the side wall of the projection. On either side of the dining room are small rooms with casement windows divided into four panes. At the ends are two canted bays with flat roofs projecting from the eaves and covered with lead. On the east gable is another bay, polygonal in plan with a hipped slated roof. The east gable of the rear house also has a smaller partially canted bay with a flat roof. Against the west gable stands a large conservatory with curved glazing bars, many panes of glass broken.

The core of the rear portion appears to be an older cottage, extended during the late Victorian period with further work carried out in the mid-twentieth century and later.

The setting is superb, situated on a small plateau with a level lawn to the north providing magnificent views of the north Atlantic. Woodland defines the lawn on both sides, with a dense wood rising steeply on the hillside behind the house. The entrance drive winds up from Seacoast Road, crossing the railway line and passing through woodland. The house sits at approximately 100 metres contour, with grounds extending over six hectares, predominantly woodland. Two outhouses survive: a garage with decorative barges near the entrance drive, and a basalt-built structure secluded within the grounds; both are slate-roofed. Mature trees on the steep hillside were once part of the adjoining property and are recorded as such in the heritage gardens inventory.