Hezlett House

Near Castlerock, a short drive from Mussenden Temple, Hezlett House is easy to miss — a single-storey thatched cottage that looks modest from the road, but is genuinely one of the best-preserved buildings of its period anywhere in Northern Ireland.

History

The house dates to around 1691, probably built as a parsonage for the rector of the nearby parish of Dunboe. It’s built using cruck construction — timber frames curving from ground to roof ridge — a technique rarely seen surviving in Northern Ireland from this period, which is most of why the house matters architecturally as much as historically.

In 1761, the house passed to Isaac Hezlett, a Presbyterian farmer, and stayed in the Hezlett family for generations — right up until the National Trust acquired it in 1976.

What’s inside

Parts of the house are deliberately left bare to show off the cruck timber frame and other structural details, alongside a small museum display explaining the construction technique and a collection of mid-Victorian furnishings. Look out for the broken sculpture fragments on display too — relics from the Earl Bishop’s own collection at Downhill Demesne, the same eccentric bishop who built Mussenden Temple nearby.

Visiting

Run by the National Trust, with the cottage grounds kept in good order alongside the house itself — a genuinely different kind of stop to the castles and cliffs elsewhere on this coast, worth the short detour if you’re already heading toward Mussenden Temple or Castlerock.

Getting there: just outside Castlerock, a natural pairing with Mussenden Temple & Downhill on the same trip.