Given some fluorescent watercolours and had a go at drawing Austin’s as lit up for the lumiere festival in 2013.  Scanner doesn’t like fluorescents however so you will just have to imagine the bright yellows and oranges

The Clipper Race boats at the historic Foyle riverside this week, animating the river below the city's historic cathedral.  A great reminder of the life and atmosphere boats can provide to a river front.

Drenagh House just outside Limavady is a very elegant stately home set within a large demesne. Historic home of the McCausland family. Robert McCausland was agent of William Conolly who purchased the Limavady Estate from the Phillip’s family.  Conolly, at one time Speaker of the Irish Parliament, acquired his riches buying and selling estates.  McCausland erected the first house several hundred yards south east of this building in the 1730s. This was demolished to make way for the present house in the 1830′s. The building is very elegant and comands its surrounding landscape.

While Drumachose Church became  an interesting ruin within the Drenagh estate, the view from ruin to  house is equally worth seeing. In the distance through the trees is the  south facade of the main house built by Charles  Lanyon in the 1830′s.

Old Drumahose Chuch is a romantic ruin set high above a steep curve on the main road from Limavady to Coleraine. It is reputed to have been built on the site of a much earlier foundation in the 13th century. From 1197 to 1315 the ‘manor of the Roo'; was held by the Anglo-Normans and the chuch is thus likely to be a Norman construction. This probably explains why it is much bigger than most medieval churches in the area. It was used until the Ulster Plantation when a replacement church was erected in 'Newtown Limavady'. Cromwell is said to have blasted the south wall with his cannons ( OS Memoirs). The church was brought within the demesne of Drenagh House in the 1860s when the old road was rerouted and the line of this former road can still be seen. It is a very atmospheric place.

This building  known as  ‘the Hermitage’ is  located on Roe Mill Road in Limavady. Hidden from the street by a high brick wall it looks south over historically landscaped grounds towards the River Roe. As a private house it was clearly built with some style and pretension with formal Doric columns flanking the entrance door and supporting a pediment which contains a semicircular window and a raking cornice with dentil course. The building has a vagulely  American  feel  with faint echo’s of  Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia University  with its bright columns and stong  pediment off set by deep red brick. The history of the house is that it was built around 1835 for the Cather Family owners of a distillery further along Roe Mill Road.  David  Cather reputedly started distilling between 1814 and 1818 and in 1835 the business passed to his son William. Output was 21,000 gallons in 1833/34.  The distillery was expanded  but was closed by 1859. One source suggests that this may be because William’s daughter, Margaret, was a very strong supporter of the Limavady Total Abstinence Society,

Limavady bus station sits on the site of the town's former train station at the end of Main Street. Designed by Albert Wallace Architects and completed in 2000. It is a discrete and self contained building that contributes to the architecture of the town. Its location in a hollow also allows a fine view of Binevenagh mountain in the distance.

Limavady Methodist Church is also on Irish Green Street and is a small building with a strong street presence. It displays one of the nice things about Limavady’s historic buildings - variety of stone work. In the area there are/were schist quarries, sandstone quarries and bassalt quarries as well as extensive brick fields. In this building the hard bassalt stone is trimmed off at the corners and openings by yellow brick. This is a givaway of its age because such brick was imported from Belfast and arrived in the area after the comming of the railways in the middle of the nineteenth century. In fact, the building was built in in 1877. It replaced an earlier building, which was situated up an entry at the east end of Main Street .

Second Limavady Presbyterian Church, Irish Green Street. Erected in 1840, it is typical of Presbyterian Churches of the time with a narrow entrance hall with stairs at each side leading to a gallery above and a classically inspired front facade. This is a little more ornate than most with a cut sandstone face and four Ionic pilasters apparently supporting an entablature with triangular pediment. It is a deliberately considered piece of architecture. Formerly there was a school and church hall framing the building to the street. This has now been replaced by a car park, but planting closer to the building helps to complement its symmetrical layout.

Limavady Community Development Initiative offices in the former Roe Valley Hospital. Opened as the Limavady Union Workhouse in 1842, it is the best surviving example of the standard type in Northern Ireland. The workhouse followed an intentionally harsh regime with families separated on entry. It continued in operation until the late 1920′s with the last inmates transferred to Coleraine in 1930. It then became a district hospital and continued in this use  until  the late 1990′s when the building was transferred to LCDI. They undertook a major renovation to a high standard which has retained and enhanced the historic charcter of the building.