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HEZLETT HOUSE
 
       Built ca. 1691 by Rector Golden in the townland of Liffock,  
  Dunboe Parish, Co. Londonderry,  the house was acquired by 
  Isaac Hezlett in the 18th century and remained in the family for 
  many generations. Hezlett House is now preserved as a historic 
  property by the National Trust, and is open to the public. It is 
  currently furnished in a late Victorian style. There is a small  
  museum of farm implements on display as well.  
                             
                    
  According to Curl (1986), Hezlett House is one of the oldest 
  on the Clothworkers' estate and in the Parish of Dunboe, Co.  
  Londonderry. Curl says further that:    

   "...it [Hezlett House] dates from the end of the 17th century, 
  and appears to have been used as the Rectory of Dunboe,  
  although it was not on Glebe (church) lands, and thus it was 
  the predecessor if the splendid Glebe house built by Shanahan 
  in the 18th century.  

  "Hezlett House is similar to others at Articlave, Aghanloo and 
  Magilligan in that the roof is carried on cruck trusses of which 
  there are five at 10'3" centers. Two of the walls were built on a  
  platform of rock and are of random rubble covered with some 
  rendering, but some of the walls are partly built with clay and  
  sand with bonding through stones, a type of construction found  
  in vernacular buildings in northwest England."   

  "The house was subdivided into three chambers by substantial 
  transverse walls. As McCourt and Evans (1972) have noted,  
  the Liffock House compares with parsonages in the midlands  
  and north of England in the first half of the17th century, which 
  in their essentials were scarcely different  from the houses of  
  better-off  yeomen. This suggests that the Hezlett House may  
  in fact be earlier than the end of the 17th century, but the  
  dendrochronological tests have shown the timber was felled  
  in 1690, so that 1691 seems to be the date of erection."   
 

 
              References 
   Curl, James Stevens (1986) The Londonderry Plantation, 1609-1914.  
      Shopwyke Hall, Chichester, Sussex: Phillimore & Co. Ltd. 

  McCourt, Desmond and Evans, David (1972). "A Seventeenth Century  
      Farmhouse at Liffock, County Londonderry" in The Ulster Journal  
      of Archaeology, Vol. 35, pp. 48-56. 

 

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