Pellipar House, Dungiven, Co Londonderry, BT47 4LY

Pellipar House is a seven-bay country house in minor French chateau style, built with two storeys, an attic floor, and a basement. The house features forward-projecting pavilions at each end, steep pitched roofs, a circular rear stair tower with a conical roof, and a back return wing.

The entrance and principal façade faces north and is symmetrical in composition. The central five bays are smooth rendered and painted. At the centre, a semi-circular arched doorway is flanked by sidescreens, with two 12-pane double-hung sliding sash windows on either side at ground level, repeated at first-floor level but less tall. Above the doorway sits a tripartite window: a central 12-pane double-hung sliding sash with an elliptical fanlight above. The cills align horizontally, but the fanlight rises above the heads of the flanking windows.

The projecting end pavilions are wider bays faced with coursed ashlar sandstone. Each has a ground-floor centred canted bay rendered and painted, with a solid parapet bearing a coat of arms plaque of the Ogilby family—the moulded coping curves slightly upward over the symbol. Each canted bay contains three windows: two-pane double-hung sliding sashes, with the centre window much wider than those on the cants. Moulded stringcourses define the parapets. Above each canted bay is a large tripartite window with a semi-circular head, having a single-pane bottom sash and a nine-pane top sash.

Three steps rise to a stone-flagged terrace in front of the entrance door and central five bays. The terrace projects beyond the line of the end pavilions and has low parapets on either side of the entrance steps. The roof has a straight parapet ridge terminating at each end against high pyramidal roofs over the end pavilions. These pyramidal roofs have neat metal cresting on their short ridges with decorative metal finials.

Over the central five-bay portion, three large gabled dormers rise from slightly above gutter level, their fronts in the same plane as the wall below. Each dormer has a wide sash window with a lower two-pane sash and an upper sash of 18 small square panes. The windows are flanked by broad fluted pilasters and scrolls rising from flat pedestals and supporting a deep plain frieze over the sash. The pedimented gable is slightly narrower than the frieze. The pyramidal roofs each have a single similar dormer. The roofs are neatly and subtly splayed out to the gutter. Above and behind the centre ridge, the apex of the staircase's conical roof is visible, flanked by two huge chimney stacks with panelled brickwork. Neat bracketed lantern lights occur over the doorway and at the inner corners of the pavilions. The whole façade makes a happy, pleasing composition.

The eastern gable is two bays wide with coursed rough ashlar sandstone having slightly projecting joints. At ground level are 12-pane sliding sash windows with exposed sash boxes, and above are similar windows of less height, matching those at the centre of the main façade. The ground-floor windows show exposed sash boxes because they are additional sashes formed external to the inner sashes. These ground-floor windows have broad plain architraves which are cover moulds to the projecting additional sashes. Two similar dormers adorn the gable hips. The roof overhang is ample with ogee guttering and the soffit panelled with scrolls between.

The long wall of the back return is in line with the gable, with a lower roofline, four bays long. It has similar ground-floor windows without external sashes and above them eight-pane sliding sash windows, all lighting the ballroom behind. The low-pitched slated roof is hipped with a leaded flat over the bay adjoining the main block—a device to reduce overshadowing of the first-floor rear bedroom window. Ridge and hips are leaded, and the stonework has varying course heights with flush smeared joints. The roof overhangs less than the main block, with the soffit supported on plain rectangular corbels. Gutters are ogee and downpipes round, whereas the main block has rectangular downpipes with great moulded trunkheads into which swannecks pour. There is a straight joint between the stonework of the main block gable and the return, and the coursing does not match.

The gable of the back return is one bay wide. To the west corner, a wall projects far enough to allow a timber-framed conservatory with a flat roof to be constructed in the angle. The conservatory has a comparatively low cill with panelling below and Art Deco-like glazing above, with a mixture of semi-circular astragals interspersed with small panes. A pair of doors gives access to the rear lawn. Above the conservatory and central on the gable is a tripartite window of ten panes, with head and cill in line with the high-level windows on the east side. In the corner above the conservatory is a tallish yellow brick chimney with two chimney pots, probably serving another conservatory now removed as well as the existing one.

The rear or south elevation of the main block is entirely smooth rendered and dominated by the semi-circular staircase tower with its conical slated roof topped with a restrained lead capping. To the west side, short of the gable, is a rectangular projection containing toilets rising high above the soffit line, with its flat roof level with the tower eaves. Between it and the tower a solid parapet is formed, while to the east of the tower the eaves reverts to its two-storey height and the slated roof is exposed, in the same plane as that over the east pavilion. Similar single dormer windows are on the roofs of the pavilions.

There is a great variety of square-headed sliding sash windows on this rear façade: some small-paned, a few large-pane, two round-headed, another segmental, and two stained glass. Those on the circular tower follow the line of the spiral stair within. The roof of the tower rises above the ridge of the main block, and a door from it gives access to a flat roof which extends between the two great chimney stacks. The ridges are in fact two—one to the north and the other to the south—a clever device to make an interesting and satisfactory roofline. An additional smaller chimney rises with the rectangular toilet block.

Between the toilet block and the circular tower at ground-floor level is a lean-to roof to a connecting corridor between kitchen, dining room, and servants' stairs, with an external door. The kitchen, a flat-roofed structure, is tucked in the angle formed by the main block and the back return and thrust up against the high stone wall of the back return. This structure has modern flat-headed windows. It is a comparatively recent replacement for a former conservatory.

The west gable is three bays wide and three floors high, faced with stone as the main front of the pavilions. The lower floor is the basement, which has a narrow area in front of it. At basement level are two round-headed door openings and one semi-circular window. These give access to barrel-vaulted small compartments, each interconnected. The architrave of the arch is decorated with egg-and-dart and filleted astragal. At ground level are three round-headed 12-pane sliding sash windows—two light the morning room, the other lights the servants' stairs. At first floor are three square-headed 12-pane sliding sash windows. The roofline of the main façade returns on this gable and returns on the rear elevation, stopping against the toilet block. Above the roofline is a centrally placed single dormer as the others, but narrower. The south-west roof arrangement is a little untidy, with toilet block, dormer, and chimney being rather crowded together.

The building is set in extensive grounds of approximately 166 hectares, mostly pasture but some wooded. To the west lies the River Roe, below the house. To the front of the house, a sweep of lawn beyond the driveway and a hedge separate it from the meadow to the north. The middle-distant farmland with Benbradagh on the skyline makes a pleasing landscape. A variety of avenues formerly approached the house with many gate lodges. The avenues are marred by being treated like agricultural access roads, finished in grant-aided concrete.

To the rear of the house, between the circular tower and toilets, was a servants' wing now demolished. To the south of it, outbuildings form an enclosed yard, now partly removed and replaced by a steel-framed corrugated iron shed. To the west is a long single-storey coachhouse with three pointed arches. This building returns at right angles to join the buildings of the former enclosed yard. An archway, now ruinous, allowed access to further outbuildings a little removed. A small enclosed but now derelict walled fruit garden lay to the south. To the south-west among the trees are two Second World War ammunition dumps.