Templemoyle House, 185 Drumrane Road, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 9LJ

Templemoyle House is a mid-19th-century farmhouse built in 1855, situated on rising ground to the west of Drumrane Road with extensive views across the Roe Valley. The house was constructed by the Reverend A. Maclurg, whose name and the date 1855 appear on a plaster plaque beneath the central chimney stack on the north gable in the form of a shield.

The building is a three-bay wide, two-storey house with a shallow double-pile back return and a lean-to extension on the south side. The walls are smooth rendered and unpainted, with gabled ends and central chimneys. The main roofs are covered in natural slates, while the lean-to extension has asbestos slates.

The main façade is crisply detailed with a central door without side screens, flanked by broad pilasters and topped with a frieze cornice that terminates in a shallow projecting flat roof almost level with the sill of the staircase window. On either side of the doorway are two-storey polygonal bays with pitched, faceted and slated roofs with tiled hips. The bay roofs have eaves that rise above the general eaves level with a slight overhang. Each bay contains three windows at ground and first floor levels, with the centre window wider than the others. These are sliding sash windows with two panes in timber. The staircase window above the door is also sliding sash but has 12 panes. The bays have lined external walls, while the remainder of the house is plain rendered. All gutters and downpipes are PVC.

The lean-to on the south side runs the full length of the gable plus the back return, with one corner chamfered and the other rounded. It contains two windows similar to those in the gable, with a low-pitch roof slated in asbestos and plastic gutters and downpipes.

The south gable of the main house has two asymmetrical metal casement windows with a central chimney between them. The west side is four bays long. The first bay is formed by the windowless gable of the lean-to. The second bay, forming the first part of the double-pile back return, has two windows at ground floor and two at first floor, though the central windows are not directly aligned. This bay is gabled with a central chimney stack. The third bay has a central rear door with a window above it and a further window on its flanking wall at ground floor. The slated roof of this bay does not join the main roof, creating a concealed valley. The fourth bay, part of the rear of the main house, has windows at ground and first floor set close to the wall angle. All roofs have natural slates with PVC guttering and downpipes and no eaves overhang or barges. Windows in these areas are all two-pane, top-hung plastic.

The north gable has windows near the corners at ground and first floor levels. The window at the north-west corner is two-pane plastic top-hung, while the one at the north-east is sliding sash with 16 panes at ground floor and 12 panes at first floor. The heads of the first floor windows are slightly above the general eaves line.

The house was originally constructed with only one bay to the south as a single-storey dwelling. In the 1950s, it was raised to two storeys and a second matching bay was added. The smooth rendering to the west of the house appears to be from the original construction.

To the rear of the house are stone-built outbuildings of two and one storey, with part slated and part corrugated asbestos roofs. Behind these are high modern barns. A stone-built lean-to adjoins the gable of the two-storey outbuilding, and against its flanking wall stands a cast iron water pump bearing the name McNiece of Ballymena.

The house has a neat garden on the south, east and north sides, bounded on the north by a random rubble wall 1.5 metres high. The wall terminates just short of the north-west corner with an engaged circular pillar, repeated at the corner. A neat pair of gates provides access to the garden from the main driveway.

The father of the present owner resigned from Bovevagh Presbyterian Church in 1952 and retired to the farm at Templemoyle, subsequently becoming President of the Ulster Farmers Union. The Reverend A. Maclurg's son was also a minister.