Friday 19 January 2024

Pellipar House

THE OBILBYS WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY LONDONDERRY, WITH 9,735 ACRES


This branch of the family of OGILBY settled in Ulster at the time of the Plantation. All the records of the family (originally Ogilvie) were destroyed by fire in Scotland in 1784.

DR JOHN OGILVIE, of Calhame, Aberdeenshire, who settled in Limavady, County Londonderry, about 1670, a great friend of the celebrated Bishop Burnetmarried Elizabeth Agnew, of the Scottish family of that name (settled in County Antrim).

He was succeeded by his son,

ALEXANDER OGILBY, who changed the spelling of the name from Ogilvie.

He married firstly, Ann Smith, and had issue,
ALEXANDER, his heir;
Mary Anne.
Mr Ogilby was succeeded by his son,

ALEXANDER OGILBYwho wedded Mary, eldest daughter of James Alexander, of Limavady (whose family came originally from the shire of Clackmannan in Scotland), by his wife Elizabeth Ross, and had issue,
John, of Ardnargle;
Alexander;
James;
William;
ROBERT, of whom hereafter;
David (Sir);
Leslie, of Strangemore;
Ann; Elizabeth; Mary; Jane.
The fifth son,

ROBERT OGILBY (1762-1839), of Pellipar House, Dungiven, County Londonderry, wedded firstly, in 1782, Mary, daughter of John Marland, of Dublin; and secondly, in 1809, Joice, eldest daughter of James Scott, of WILLSBORO', County Londonderry, and had issue,
Alexander;
JAMES, of whom we treat.
Robert Ogilby purchased the entire manor of Limavady from the Conolly family, also large properties in County Tyrone, and estates at Woolwich in Kent.


He was also lessee of the estates of the Skinners' Company in County Londonderry.

His younger son,

JAMES OBILBY (1812-85), of Pellipar House, died sp and intestate, when the property was inherited by his cousin,

ROBERT ALEXANDER OGILBY JP DL (1850-1902), of Ardnargle and PELLIPAR HOUSE, High Sheriff of County Londonderry, 1887, Captain, 4th King's Own Regiment.

Under the will of his great-uncle, Robert Ogilby, he succeeded on the death of his cousin, James Ogilby, to the Limavady, Pellipar, County Tyrone and Woolwich estates.

Mr Ogilby married, in 1875, Helen Sarah, second daughter of the Rev George Bomford Wheeler, Rector of Ballysax, County Kildare, and had issue,
ROBERT JAMES LESLIE, his heir;
Ethel Maude; Mabel Norah; Esther Gladys; Mildred Constance.
Mr Ogilby was succeeded by his only son,

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL ROBERT JAMES LESLIE OGILBY DSO JP DL (1880-1964), of Ardnargle and Pellipar, who married, in 1936, Isabel Katherine, daughter of Captain PCG Webster, though the marriage was without issue.

Colonel Ogilby was a kinsman of both the Earl Alexander of Tunis and the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, through the line of the Alexanders of Limavady.

He was also brother-in-law of Brigadier-General George Delamain Crocker.
Colonel Ogilby entered the Army as a 2nd lieutenant, 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards 1903-1905; a lieutenant, 2nd Life Guards; High Sheriff, 1911; 29 Aug 1914 joined the Special reserve Officers as lieutenant; 29 Feb 1915, captain (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards; 1916, Major and 2nd in Command of the 7th Norfolk Regiment; 1916, lieutenant-colonel commanding 2/114 London Regiment (London Scottish). He served with the British Expeditionary Force (dispatches London Gazette); served 1916-1919 in the war; Belgian Croix de Guerre, Star, 1914; DSO and bar, 1917.
The Woolwich estate was bought at public auction in 1812 by Robert Ogilby (younger brother of John Ogilby), who also leased, in 1803, the Skinners estate at Dungiven and lived at Pellipar House.

Ardnargle was not strictly, therefore, a dower house for Pellipar, although it was used as such when R A Ogilby (1850-1902) inherited both properties from 1885 onwards.
The Ogilby family has had a proud military tradition: Major Robert Alexander Ogilby married Sarah Wheeler, daughter of Rev George Bomford Wheeler, a founder of the Irish Times, TCD classic scholar and contributor to Dickens' magazine, "All Year Round"; a DL for County Londonderry; captain 4th King's Own Regiment; and took part in the Zulu war (1879, medal).
In 1902, Maurice Marcus McCausland, of Drenagh, married Eileen Leslie, daughter of R A Ogilby DL, of Pellipar.


PELLIPAR HOUSE, near Dungiven, County Londonderry, was originally owned by the Skinners' Company, one of the livery companies of the city of London.

The Company leased the estate to Sir Edward Doddington in 1616 for about 58 years.

Sir Edward died in 1618, and the lease passed to his widow, Lady Doddington (née Beresford), who subsequently married Sir Francis Cooke.

Lady Cooke, with Tristram Beresford and George Carey as her trustees, attained a lease for about 47 years from 1627.

In 1696 the Manor of Pellipar, which included both parts of the estate, was demised to Edward Carey.

The Carey family continued to hold the estate throughout the rest of the 18th century until 1794, when Robert Ogilby, of Pellipar House, paid Carey £10,000 for his interest in the lease (due to expire in 1803).

Robert Ogilby controlled the Dungiven part of the estate and his brother James, who lived in Kilcattan House, near Claudy, was agent for the western part of the estate.

Robert Ogilby died in 1839.

His nephew, Robert Leslie Ogilby, of the Manor House, Dungiven, became effectively agent of the estate for his uncle’s trustees and for his cousin, James Ogilby, who lived at Pellipar House.

Robert Leslie Ogilby died in 1872 and the Skinners' Company regained direct control.

An agent, J  Clark, was appointed in 1873.

Building work and improvements on the estate followed.

James Ogilby, of Pellipar House, died in 1885 and the freehold of Pellipar House was sold to Robert Alexander Ogilby for £4,500.

The remaining landholdings were sold to the tenants in the latter years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century.


THE FIRST undertaker of the Pellipar estate was Sir Edward Doddington, who built the bawn & castle on the site of Dungiven Old Priory.

Sir Edward and Lady Doddington leased Pellipar, and subsequently a family of planters called the Careys took over the estate.

They moved from Skinners hall (on the site of the Old Priory) and built a castle closer to the town.

By this time all danger of attacks by the native Irish had subsided and the Careys did not need to make their castle a bawn for protection and safety against them.

The estate lease was purchased by Robert Ogilby in 1794 for £10,000.

When the lease expired in 1803 Ogilby obtained extension of the lease on payment of £25,000 and annual rent of £1,500 from the Skinners Company.

Mr Ogilby improved the house by adding the single-storey pavilions to the east and west which are built in ashlar sandstone, with large arched windows set in recesses on the north-facing, hipped gables.

He also extended or improved the adjacent outbuildings.

The Ogilbys were largely involved in the linen industry around Limavady, County Londonderry, in 1782.

The architect Fitzgibbon Louch was engaged at Pellipar around the 1860s and it is probable that the ballroom dates from that time.

The stonework of the 1907 improvements is noticeably different, though still in ashlar.

In 1880 Pellipar House was damaged by fire, though James Ogilby set about reinstating the building promptly, and seems to have added the stained-glass window at the main entrance door which bears his monogram and date of 1882.

The Londonderry architect, Albert Forman, was engaged in extensive improvements in 1907, when the pavilions had additional floors added to them, including the attic floor over the entire house.

The whole house was re-roofed with steep pitches, and the conical shape was given to the tower which was raised.

This was when the chateau style of the overall appearance developed.

The entrance hall was revamped, gable windows adjusted, the single storeys to the pavilions added, and the arched upper part of the original windows raised to the first floor.

The rear of the building underwent a few changes in the later 20th century.

The Ogilbys sold their estates in 1956, when the present owners purchased the house and adjoining land of 400 acres.

Pellipar was occupied during the 2nd World War by the War Department.


The present owners demolished the servants' accommodation to the rear of the buildings and part of the adjoining outbuildings.

A conservatory was also demolished to make way for the present kitchen.

The whole of the interior of the building has been sensitively decorated and furnished by the present owners, and the principal facades remain intact.


The River Roe flows near the house.

There are fine trees along the Derryware Burn and an avenue of beech and lime.

There is a small conservatory and a small modern ornamental garden at the house.

There were six gate lodges pre-1830s, two of which survive, though one is ruinous.

First published in January, 2012.   Photo Credits: Bixentro.

9 comments :

Virginia Henry Martins said...

Very interesting - my name is Virginia Henry Martins and this is my parents house! A cousin forwarded this blog to me. I grew up in this house, and have many happy memories of cycling around the avenues and going for walks through the fields and glens.
In the hall, next to the front door, there is a stained glass window with James Ogilvy's initials. A main feature of the hall is the spiral staircase.

Cherry said...

My sister, Virginia, has just forwarded this blog to me. I too grew up here in the 70s. I now live in Somerset, but love going back for visits to see my brother and mother. My brother, John Henry, runs Pellipar Tree Services, a successful business, from the Estate. He has,very sympathetically, converted one of the gate lodges, where he now lives. My mother still lives in Pellipar House, and has no plans to leave!

Unknown said...

I fitted the new kitchen in Pelliper house back in the early 2000's. A very interesting house with an amazing past. Mrs Henry would tell us lots of the history of the house. The story I remember best was how the Terazo floor came to be in the kitchen. How 2 Italian men took 2 years to lay it down. The other thing that sticks in my mind was the 3 foot thick sandstone walls that took me 2 days to drill a 4" round hole through for the extractor fan.
It was nice to read the full history of the house and the family tree.

Anonymous said...

I visited this house in the 70’s with my parents. My dad was Tommy Curry and he worked for the Leckpatrick Dairy collecting milk. We spent the day there and had lunch. My brother, sister and I played with the children living in the house. I remember the floor mentioned above. My name is Kathleen Lorimer nee Curry. It was a lovely day.

Unknown said...

The house I was born into in Lurgan in 1949 was called Pellipar. Why would this be?

Anonymous said...

Your birthplace in Lurgan might have some connection to the Skinners company or perhaps it was a place where skins/hides were processed, such as a tannery? I believe that the word Pellipar comes from the Latin for hides/skins. I looked it up years ago because I grew up in the housing estate that was built on the land that once would have belonged to the Ogilbys, and was named after the house. My sisters, friends and I spent our childhoods running along the "back lane" as we called it, which ran along the backs of our houses to the mansion. I was always fascinated by the big house but could only ever admire it from afar. The surrounding land is beautiful and we were very lucky to grow up there.

Anonymous said...

Hello, my name is Joe Simpson (now living in Canada, but born in Co. Derry in ‘52) - my late mother Pat Simpson, née Fulton, born 1926, was a first cousin of the late Kathleen Henry, also née Fulton. Pat’s father, Joseph Fulton of Thornhill Farm, Ballykelly (1887-1950) was an older brother of Kathleen’s father, James (Jim) Fulton, known to my mum as Uncle Jim. I recently came across an old diary entry of mine dated May 21, 1970 which mentions taking a car drive with my mother from out then-home in Belfast, to visit some Co Derry relations, and part of it reads as follows: “Stopped [on way to Derry city] for an hour and a half at Kathleen Fulton’s (Mrs. Henry) home, Pellipar, near Dungiven: vast place. Mum hadn’t seen her [cousin Kathleen] for twenty years!” I still recall the two of us siting down for a mid-morning cup of tea with Mrs. Henry, and the two cousins who were only about four or five years apart in age, having a great catch up chat. Obviously they had fond memories of each other from their youth, and the Dungiven Fulton family they both came from, was a large and quite close family of ten sibling, including their respective fathers Joseph and James (Jim). I have a scanned copy of a (circa 1920s) family group photo of them all (except for brother Rev. Marcus Fulton, a church minister living in Canada) with their widowed elderly mother, Jane Scott Fulton, Kathleen and Pat’s paternal grandmother, who died in 1929. So nice to read this blog about Pellipar House, which obviously made quite an impression on me that day in May, 1970 when I was just 18. I have a vague memory of having tea that morning in a converted castle tower, but that might be my memory playing tricks! Nice also to see comments posted by the Henry sisters, my distant cousins!

Anonymous said...

Hi, wonder if your dad Tommy Curry was brother of Jeannie Henderson née Curry and husband of Winnie? If so, we’re cousins several times removed as that Tommy Curry like his sister Jeannie was a full cousin of my late mum, Pat Simpson née Fulton from Thornhill Farm, Ballykelly, Co Derry. I have a final handwritten 1967 letter from my own granny Fulton (d. 1967) who was married to Joseph Fulton (d. 1950) of Thornhill, a brother of Mary Curry née Fulton (d. 1953) in which my granny mentions getting a visit from her nephew m-by-marriage, Tommy Curry, and his wife Winnie. At the time she (my Fulton granny) was in a care facility in Moneymore where she passed away soon after, in April ‘69. Please see also my comment on Pellipar posted below today. From Joe Simpson (Canada).

Anonymous said...

Is this house haunted?