Mussenden Temple Londonderry
Mussenden Temple perches on a clifftop at Downhill on the north coast of County Londonderry, a small circular domed building modelled on the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli that stands so close to the cliff edge it appears to be hovering above the Atlantic Ocean below. Built in 1785 by Frederick Hervey, the eccentric Earl of Castledagh and Bishop of Derry, as a library and summer retreat on his Downhill Estate, the temple combines classical architectural refinement with one of the most dramatically exposed positions of any Georgian building in Ireland, the views along the north coast toward the Giant's Causeway to the east and Magilligan Strand to the west forming one of the finest coastal panoramas in Ulster. The Bishop of Derry was one of the most colourful and unconventional figures of eighteenth-century Irish society, a man whose extensive continental travels, enormous wealth and progressive views on religious tolerance made him a distinctive patron of arts and architecture. The Downhill Estate he created above the north coast cliffs was his principal residence, and the lost Downhill House, now a ruin behind the temple, was the main building of an estate that also included the walled garden, a mausoleum and the cliff-edge library building whose survival has made it the emblem of the entire estate. The National Trust acquired Mussenden Temple and the Downhill Estate in 1980 and manages both the building and the surrounding landscape. The clifftop walking route connects the temple to the ruins of Downhill House and the Mussenden Road gives access from the Bishop's Gate, a fine piece of neoclassical gate architecture in its own right. The view from the temple's position on the cliff edge is one of the finest in Northern Ireland, the great curve of Magilligan Strand below, the Inishowen Peninsula across Lough Foyle in Donegal and the distinctive silhouette of Binevenagh Mountain to the southeast creating a panorama of extraordinary variety. The beach at Benone immediately below the estate, one of the longest stretches of beach in Northern Ireland, is accessible from the estate and provides a complementary strand and dune experience to the clifftop drama above.