Overview
What makes Hezlett House worth the stop isn’t the thatch – it’s the roof underneath it. Built around 1691 on Mussenden Road outside the seaside village of Castlerock, this low, single-storey cottage is held up by a cruck frame: pairs of curved timbers raised from the ground to carry the ridge, a method already rare in Ulster when it was built. Several rooms are deliberately left bare so you can see the trusses, and that – not the furniture – is the thing to look up at.
The National Trust has run it since 1976 and dresses the furnished rooms as a late-Victorian Irish farmstead. It’s a small house and a short visit; go for the building rather than the contents, and expect to be shown round rather than left to wander.
History and architecture
The house was probably built as a parsonage for the rector of Dunboe, and served as a rectory for the Archdeacon of Derry and his successors through to 1761. The walls are the practical work of their day: uncoursed rubble with a roughcast finish and a core of earth and sand, under a thick thatch. Overhead, the cruck frame does the clever part, opening up the interior without central posts and leaving the house more spacious inside than its footprint suggests.
In 1761 the property was bought by Isaac Hezlett, a Presbyterian farmer, and the Hezlett family worked the land here for over two centuries – it’s also recorded as Liffock House – until the National Trust took it on in 1976. In recent years the Trust has been investigating damp in the 17th-century fabric and carrying out works to secure the building’s long-term future, so parts of the interior presentation can change from visit to visit.
What to See Inside
Visiting Hezlett House is an exercise in looking up and looking closely. The interior is deliberately divided between furnished and unfurnished spaces, allowing visitors to appreciate both the domestic history and the architectural skeleton of the building.
- The cruck-truss roof: Several rooms are left bare to expose the curved timber trusses – the whole reason the house is protected. They were shaped by hand and raised into arches, and seeing them uncovered is rarer than seeing the thatch that usually hides them.
- Victorian domestic life: The furnished rooms are dressed for the late Victorian period of a working Irish farm – a drop-leaf table, a heavy linen press, rag rugs, plain chairs. It’s a hands-on house rather than a roped-off one; you’re encouraged to pick things up.
- The Downhill Marbles: The garden holds fragments of the Downhill Marbles, broken relics of the 18th-century sculpture collection the Earl Bishop kept at nearby Downhill, much of it lost in a 19th-century fire there. The pieces are gradually being dug into the grounds, so what’s on show shifts over time.
The grounds and nearby
The grounds are the underrated part. There’s a small working fruit orchard and kitchen garden, community allotments and plant-propagation beds, and heritage-breed chickens on site – level, grass-pathed and genuinely pleasant to potter round while children chase the hens. The ground here is wheelchair-friendly even where the house is not.
Hezlett House sits within the wider Downhill Demesne, so don’t treat it as a standalone trip. It’s about a mile’s walk to Mussenden Temple, the neoclassical rotunda that hangs over the cliff edge and was built as a library for the Downhill estate; from there the path drops to Downhill Strand, a long beach good for a walk in any weather and a swim in summer. The house is also on the Causeway Coast Cycle Route, a fair rest stop mid-ride.
Practical information
Opening and admission This is the catch: the house doesn’t keep steady daily hours. Opening is seasonal and event-led, admission is by guided tour, and the pattern shifts through the year – some months it opens most days, others only a couple of weekends. It runs a busy events programme too, from ‘Haunted Hezlett’ at Halloween to ‘Santa’s House’ at Christmas, and takes part in the European Heritage Open Days. Check the National Trust website before you travel, and note last admission is usually an hour before closing. Admission is free to National Trust members; non-members should expect to pay, so confirm the current charge when you book.
Parking and facilities The house has its own car park, steps from the entrance. It can be tight on bank holidays and peak summer days, so avoid those if you can. Basic facilities include toilets, with an accessible toilet at the Lion’s Gate.
Accessibility The grounds and garden are level and wheelchair-friendly. The house is not: doorways are narrow, ceilings low and the floors uneven, so wheelchair and frame users will struggle inside, though the grounds and the marbles remain open to everyone.
Getting there On Mussenden Road, Castlerock (BT51 4RP), off the A2 coastal road from both Derry–Londonderry and Coleraine. Castlerock railway station is a 10-minute walk, and the Ulsterbus 234 between Coleraine and Londonderry stops nearby. Dogs are welcome on leads in the grounds and garden but not in the house; assistance dogs are welcome throughout.
Book onto a tour, then give the rest of your time to Mussenden Temple and the strand – the cottage is the short, quiet part of a good half-day on this stretch of coast.