Historic Places in County Londonderry

Bellaghy Bawn is situated about 2 miles off the Belfast to Londonderry road near the town of Bellaghy, north west of Lough Neagh. The bold white building, located in Castle Street, it is known locally as "the castle'. Bellaghy Bawn is a 17th century fortified tower house with a surrounding defensive wall (known as a bawn). The Bawn is one of the best preserved in Northern Ireland. Parts of the bawn wall are still standing, although the northern bawn wall with the entrance has gone. The excavated foundations of an earlier 17th-century house can be seen against the western bawn wall. There used to be two round towers at opposite corners of the bawn. Only the south-east tower survives and is attached to the house. On the western wall is a gateway through the wall, and on the outside you can see brick buttresses that have been built to prop up the leaning wall. Facilities The house contains displays featuring the work of local poet, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney and other Ulster poets. It also has exhibits featuring local natural history, and a history of the Ulster Plantation. There are video displays of the bawn and some of Seamus Heaney's broadcasts. The castle is open Wednesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm between Easter and the end of September. Reduced opening hours apply for the rest of the year with the house open on Wednesdays from 10am to 4pm and Sundays from noon to 4pm. The Castle was built by Sir Baptist Jones in 1619 on land rented from the Vintners Company of London. On the site is a blend of building styles from 17th century to 19th century. It is believed that the main house was built in the 18th century on the site of the original 17th century house. The Bawn was attacked in the rebellion of 1641 rebellion, but survived unscathed when many in the area were burned down. The house was occupied until 1987. Bellaghy Bawn has been open to the public since 1996.

Dungiven Castle in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, is a nineteenth-century Gothic house incorporating the ruins of an Augustinian priory founded in the twelfth century by the O'Cahan family, who are commemorated by one of the finest medieval tomb monuments in Ireland within the priory ruins. The site has a long ecclesiastical history as the location of Dungiven Priory, founded in the twelfth century by the O'Cahan family who were lords of this part of Derry. The early seventeenth-century bastion fortification added to the priory site reflects the plantation era's military requirements. The priory ruin with its decorated O'Cahan tomb is the most significant heritage element of the site and can be visited freely. The surrounding Sperrins landscape provides outstanding walking and cycling country in one of the most scenic upland areas of Northern Ireland.

Salterstown Castle near Ballyronan in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, is a ruined early seventeenth-century plantation castle on the shores of Lough Neagh, one of the lesser-known plantation sites associated with the Salters Company of London, one of the twelve London Companies that took part in the Plantation of Ulster and from which the nearby settlement of Salterstown takes its name. The castle represents the plantation settlements established by the London Companies along the western shores of Lough Neagh as part of the systematic colonisation of County Londonderry. Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake in Ireland and Britain, is visible from the castle site and provides one of the most important wildlife habitats in Northern Ireland, supporting large populations of eels, wintering wildfowl and breeding waterbirds.