page_title: Eglinton, County Londonderry
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Eglinton, County Londonderry / History
caption_attribution_description: English: St. Canices Church of Ireland, Main Street, Eglinton, County Londonderry.
context_page_description: Eglinton is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It lies 5.5 miles east-north-east of Derry, to which it serves as a sleeper village, and 9.5 miles west-south-west of Limavady. Eglinton had a population of 3,679 people in the 2011 Census, an increase of 16% on the 2001 Census population of 3,165. It lies within Derry and Strabane district. The City of Derry Airport, also known as Eglinton Aerodrome and formerly as Londonderry Eglinton Airport, lies a short distance from the village.
  Eglinton still has an elegant church, former market house, trees around a green and four oaks which started life in Windsor Great Park. The River Muff flows through the village with the afforested Muff Glen being situated just south of the village. At an embankment of Lough Foyle, birdwatchers can find the feeding ground of many seabirds and waders on the mud flats at low tide.
context_section_description: The village of Eglinton was originally known as (the) Muff, and alternatively as (the) Moigh or Mough. These come from Irish  Magh / an Mhagh, meaning 'the plain' and were the names of the townland in which the village began. The village was founded in 1619 by the Grocers' Company of London. As part of the Plantation of Ulster, James I had granted a large area (15,900 acres) of Faughanvale parish to the Grocers in 1609. The Grocers did not farm it themselves but leased this area to Edward Rone of Essex in 1615 with the stipulation that he built a bawn and 12 houses by 1619. The yearly rent being £116-13s-4d. Rone died in 1618 but his brother-in-law Robert Harrington took over and by 1619 a castle and bawn and 8 houses were erected in the townland of Muff (now Eglinton) and by 1622 the stipulated building was completed
  The castle (really a castellated house and bawn with 4 flanker towers) was besieged in 1641 during the English Civil War by the insurgents under Colonel McDonnell and defended by the garrison during the winter of that year. It was relieved  the following summer by  troops from Derry but it afterwards fell into the hands of the parliamentarians by whom it was dismantled. During the Siege of Derry, the castle was briefly occupied by troops of King James while they were foraging for supplies.
  The ruins were standing and occupied until 1823 when the present Rectory was built on the site. The only remains of the castle today being the cellars under the rectory.
  The Church of Ireland was represented within the village by the Parish Church of Faughanvale which was built in 1626. It was later superseded by a new Parish Church constructed in 1821 with the ruins of the old church being extant within the adjacent graveyard.
  The Presbyterian Church was represented in the village with the building of the first church in 1730. Prior to this, the congregation formed part of the Glendermott Congregation in the city of Derry. The original church was built in the townland of Tullanee just east of the village. The existing much larger church, Faughanvale Presbyterian Church, was built in 1894 with the help of donations from fellow citizens of the congregation who had some time earlier emigrated to the United States.  Nothing remains of the original church which stood in what is now the Presbyterian Church graveyard immediately to the rear of the new church.
  There were several other places called Muff at the time, especially one nearby in Donegal which created much confusion. The residents of the village resolved to afford of the opportunity to change the name. Therefore, on 19 August 1858, the village of Muff became Eglinton in honour of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the 13th Earl of Eglinton who was visiting the nearby Templemoyle Agricultural School at the time. The school was opened in 1826 aimed at teaching new agricultural methods but eventually closed in 1865. The building remained disused for many years before being converted into a nursing home in the 1990s. 
  Tom Gallaher (1840–1927), the miller's son of Templemoyle, was the founder of the famous tobacco firm of Gallahers, now the Gallaher Group. His relatives lived in The Glen House in the centre of Eglinton village until the 1950s.
  One of the oldest buildings, if not the oldest standing today, is Foyle Park House. Foyle Park was built in 1813 by David Babington who rented his land from the Worshipful Company of Grocers. The mansion was built when Babington started to make land improvements in the west of the village between 1805-1836 when he planted 172,000 trees, mainly to shelter the house. Babington used the house as a literary school for a while. When Babington's lease expired, the Grocers didn't renew the lease so the Literary School then closed its doors and Foyle Park then became the new Grocers' Hall. It was used as the Grocers' Hall until the 1870s when James Davidson, a customs and exports worker, bought the entire village from the Grocers' Company. This included the Foyle Park Estate. Davidson lived at Foyle Park and the Manor House. His son, James Will
caption: Eglinton Parish Church
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