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,
RSS Feed
