Northern Lights
Breaking the fourth wall to borrow theatre speak, not architectural parlance, we’re all up for a challenge but there’s only so much paparazzo lenses and post shoot editing can achieve. A sea of car parking around County Londonderry’s finest Palladian villa may be an unfortunate modern necessity for its new use as a private hospital but it doesn’t make for the most photogenic foreground. And so we made use of a series of strategically placed shrubs and trees to camouflage the vehicles. Our intelligent readership (more fourth wall breakage) will ably piece together the jigsaw of photographs to get the full picture of that tremendous quinquepartite façade.
English novelist William Thackeray, passing through the village on his 1842 tour of Ireland, was a fan despite not being a nonconformist enthusiast: “In Ballykelly, besides numerous simple, stout, brick built dwellings for the peasantry, with their shining windows and trim garden plots, is a Presbyterian Meeting House, so well built, substantial, and handsome, so different from the lean, pretentious, sham Gothic ecclesiastical edifices which have been erected in late years in Ireland, that it can’t fail to strike the tourist who has made architecture his study or his pleasure. The gentleman’s seats in the district are numerous and handsome; and the whole movement along the road betokened cheerfulness and prosperous activity.”
Ballykelly has been the subject of academic research by Donald Girvan in Buildings of North Derry, 1974, and The History, Architecture and Planning of the Estates of The Fishmongers’ Company in Ulster by James Curl, 1981. Both are Ulster Architectural Heritage Society publications. The land where the village stands was granted by James I in 1613 to the Fishmonger’s Company, one of the ancient Livery Companies of the City of London. The Company’s English architect Richard Suter and Irish builder James Turnbull combined their design and delivery acumen to transform Ballykelly into a village of architectural note. Buff pink sandstone has never looked so good.
James relates, “One of Suter’s first and most happy compositions came off his drawing board and the designs were realised in 1824. This was Church Hill, the Model Farm for the Estate. The cost £900 and was built of Dungiven sandstone by James Turnbull. It consists of a two storey house, three windows wide, with a low hipped roof and wide eaves. High rubble walls link this central building to the single storey rectangular pavilions that again have hipped roofs. These pavilions have semicircular headed windows set in blind arched recesses. The Ordinance Survey Memoirs thought the farm was too ambitious and expensive to be relevant to the circumstances of most farms in the parish. However, the Model Farm remains one of the most distinguished buildings on the estate.”
Church Hill is Palladian in style and function. Palladio’s villas of Veneto were farmhouses. The lefthand pavilion of Church Hill was stables; the righthand one, stores. Behind the connecting high walls lay a walled farmyard. The pavilions were increased in height by 75 centimetres to allow another floor to be inserted into them: the change of material to brick makes this apparent. The overall impact still gives a powerful punch: a noble design separated from the road by a meadow. The central block is almost square in footprint with a double piled roof. In 1988 planning permission was granted to convert the Model Farm into the North West Independent Hospital. A two storey extension for 18 additional bedrooms and services was approved in 2002 for Kingsbridge Private Hospital. The façade remains uninterrupted, a mini Russborough.
Don’t blink when driving through Ballykelly for high up on the opposite side of the road are two more of Richard Suter’s accomplished set pieces: Drummond House (now Drummond Hotel) and Ballykelly Presbyterian Church. The bare pilasters and clean mouldings of Drummond House are late neoclassicism at its most reticent. Donald records, “Turnbull created Drummond House to designs by Suter as a ‘commodious house built by the Fishmongers’ Company for the residence of their agent’. The designs dated from 1822 show Drummond House was a handsome structure, double fronted, three windows wide, and two storeys high. It had the stripped down neoclassical manner to be found at the schools anad the two churches, and had dressed sandstone corner pilasters. Windows had segmental heads and elegant sashes. The porch was added by Turnbull.”
Richard Suter replaces Palladio with Inigo Jones as his chief inspiration for the Presbyterian Church. The boldness of the 30 degree high pediment and deep overhang with moulded soffits are straight from St Paul’s Church Covent Garden, London. Over to Donald: “Ballykelly Presbyterian Church was begun in 1826 and completed in 1827. There is a two storey arrangement of windows as would be expected in galleried churches. The upper windows have segmental, and the lower have straight heads, arranged in six bays along the length of the church, and flanking the central blind arch in which the pedimented entrance doorcase is set. Over the blind arch is a massive keystone. Once more, the building is constructed of coarsed rubble with Dungiven sandstone dressings, and once again the masonry is of superlative quality. Glazing bars are of cast iron.”
Having driven past Church Hill on one side and Drummond Hotel and the Presbyterian Church on the other, still don’t blink. There’s one more architectural treat in store courtesy of our favourite architect and builder duo. Donald Girvan tells all: “Bridge House, 1829. Builder James Turnbull. Cost £2,000. A fine two storey, five bay Dungiven sandstone house, with attic. It was originally the house of the dispensary surgeon and the mark where the dispensary door was can still be seen between the first two bays on the left. Above hung the Dispensaries’ Arms, which the Ordnance Survey Memoirs felt ‘were too thick and clumsy, like the house itself’. The house is three bays deep with extensive offices behind. It is attractively set at an angle on the road.” In 2002 planning permission was granted to restore and convert Bridge House to three apartments and develop its surroundings for 17 townhouses.
